12:33 am, April 1, 2011
CARSITE’S website has gone from live to ‘undergoing maintenance’ – the latest twist in the TescoCars.com tale.
Following yesterday’s removal of all cars from the car supermarket’s website, late yesterday evening the website was taken off line and a holding page put up in its place.
Car Dealer Magazine believes Carsite will be the partner for TescoCars.com, the supermarket’s rumoured assault on the used car sales market.
We understand that Carsite will provide a white label product for the supermarket giant, which has been planning a move into the used car market for months.
Yesterday we asked a spokesman for the car supermarket why it had removed all cars from sale, both on its website and from its advertising partners, yet all he would say was ‘no comment’.
However, Car Dealer has now been told by five independent sources that Carsite will be ‘taken over by Tesco’, rebranded and will start selling ex-Motability cars to the public under its own branding very soon.
We already know that Tesco has been in talks with finance companies about providing PCP and HP offerings and a mole inside Tesco told us a dedicated unit had been set up to pull together the launch.
Since breaking the story, Car Dealer has been inundated with secretive sources drip feeding us information about the move – but the fact a successful car supermarket has removed all of its cars from sale AND shut its website down ‘for maintenance’ is the strongest indication yet that a move is imminent.
And, if Carsite was just updating its website, why didn’t its spokesman tell us that was simply the case? Never has a ‘no comment’ said so much…
Yesterday we predicted TescoCars.com’s launch would happen in a matter of days, not weeks – and this latest development only confirms that in our minds.
‘When transferring over domains and inventory it’s protocol to shut down a site for maintenance,’ said a web expert we spoke to late last night. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the last you see of the Carsite name and it remerges with Tesco branding.’
More on the Tesco story here:
Is Carsite potential partner for Tesco?
Is Tesco about to sell used cars?
