11:14 am, April 2, 2024
Physical car auctions are here to stay despite more and more dealers buying stock online.
That is the verdict of Maneheim boss Liam Quegan, who believes that demand for in-person sales in stronger than ever.
Speaking on the latest episode of the Car Dealer Podcast, sponsored by JATO, Quegan spoke about the need for dealers to ‘feel the metal’ when buying stock.
He also told hosts Jon Raey and James Batchelor that the outfit may consider putting on more physical auctions as demand continue to grow.
Quegan, who is managing director of Manheim Auction Services and NextGear Capital at Cox Automotive UK, said: ‘We went back to physical nearly two years ago now. Emerging out of the pandemic, pretty much all our sales were physical by the end of 2022 and we’ve just found it works for our customers.
‘We like the vibrancy of the physical auction and we sell a broad set of stock so for some customers it’s really important to see and feel the metal as we would say.
‘We’ve got no desire to change it at all. If anything we could see that frankly there might be need for more of it, if you think about physical space.
‘As these vehicles start to be defleeted in larger volumes from the fleet companies, capacity is actually the challenge because there’s a lot of cars around.
‘I should also mention light commercial vehicles, which take up a bit more space than those cars as well.
‘We will stay in our current model for as long as the eye can see. We have no plans to change it.’
The Car Dealer Podcast sees an industry guest join our hosts to discuss the motor trade’s biggest headlines of every week.
Among the other topics up for discussion in the latest episode were Hyundai cutting its number of dealer partners, Volvo ending diesel production and Trading Standards’ calls for car dealers to be licensed.
You can listen to all episodes of the Car Dealer Podcast on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Quegan was speaking shortly after Car Dealer founder James Baggott attended a Manheim auction in Colchester, as part of our AI Car Dealership Project.
You can read what he made of the experience here and watch the full video at the top of this story.
