12:01 pm, October 13, 2023
The UK’s biggest car dealers saw their sales take a tumble in September, despite rising levels of used car stock.
That is according to our used car partner CarCondor.co.uk which has been analysing the figures for the ninth month of the year.
The data shows that sales of second-hand cars declined to 163,662 in September, compared to 169,322 in August – a dip of 3.34 per cent.
There were declines across all sectors with franchise dealers seeing sales fall by 2.25 per cent and independents by 0.23 as used car supermarkets experienced a whopping 11.06 per cent drop off.
As a result of their falling sales, the 200 biggest firms made a combined £3.48bn in revenue in September, down 2.63 per cent on the previous month’s £3.57bn.
Despite the small struggles, dealers did see headaches over stock begin to ease last month, with new stock levels rising by 13.19 per cent to 174,065 units.
Arnold Clark remained the most stocked dealer in the 200-strong list, with an average of 19,004 second-hand cars in stock, a hefty fall on last month’s 22,276.
Marshall also clung onto second place with 7,778, ahead of Evans Halshaw which moved up one place to third with 7,616.
The top five is completed by Sytner, which dropped one place, with 6,699 and Bristol Street Motors, which had 6,646 used cars in stock.
When it came to the online disruptors, Cinch remained in ninth with 5,740 while Cazoo ended a difficult month in 12th with a stock level of 3,992.
The full list can be viewed below – members of the Car Dealer website can access the data as part of their membership.
