12:21 pm, November 22, 2022
Used car dealer Gotham Motors has thrown the BBC’s Matt Allwright out of their showroom after they were questioned about selling cars with outstanding finance on them.
On today’s Morning Live, presenter Allwright confronted car dealer Phil Manicolo who runs Gotham Motor Group, based in Heywood, Lancashire.
Manicolo’s team became agitated with the questioning and eventually threw Allwright and his camera crew out of their dealership.
Manicolo told Car Dealer today that the show was ‘highly edited’ and ejecting them was the ‘only way to end’ the questions.
The feature was the second part of a BBC investigation into car dealers allegedly selling used cars with outstanding finance on them.
It followed yesterday’s section about CVF Rochdale – a car dealership that had failed to pay off car finance on some of the vehicles it bought in part exchange.
The dealership has since gone into administration. Manicolo was the sales manager at the site.
One customer had their car confiscated by the police and was left paying for the finance on it while its previous owner, who part exchanged it with CVF, was also left paying for it too.
Presenter Matt Allwright found that former director Dave Ward of CVF Rochdale set up Gotham Motors after the previous dealership went bust. Sales manager Manicolo joined the new set-up.
Allwright called it ‘phoenixing’ – where one company is ‘burned to the ground and another rises from the ashes’.
The BBC alleged Gotham Motors was also selling cars with outstanding finance on them, some of which had previously been for sale at CVF Rochdale.
Two undercover reporters found cars on the dealership’s site that were being offered for sale with finance outstanding on them.
Allwright confronted Manicolo in today’s show, which can been seen here on BBC iPlayer.
‘What I am less pleased about than your freshen up of the premises is you’re selling cars with finance on without declaring that,’ Allwright says.
‘Do you know what that does to the people who were involved in those transactions?’
Gotham response
In the show, Manicolo tells Allwright that it was ‘not himself that was dealing with it, it was the two owners’ of the previous car dealership.
Manicolo admits that there were ‘10 or so customers that came to light’ that had issues with their car finance being paid off.
‘It was down to the owners of the business, it wasn’t down to myself, I worked there,’ Manicolo tells Allwright.
‘I took a lot of responsibility and made sure a lot of the customers, when they were going through them [sic] things, were not out of personal pocket. I tried my best.’
Allwright accuses Manicolo of selling cars that were ‘double financed’ and Manicolo refutes that in the programme, blaming the owners of the company and that he did not know the ‘ins and outs’.
It’s at this point a member of the Gotham Motors team loses his temper and tells the camera crew to ‘get out’ before he ‘gets mad’.
‘I think it’s safe to say Phil can talk a good game but the reality is, when you look at the documents, when you look at ownership, when you look at the finance that’s left on these vehicles, that he’s offering up for sale, it doesn’t stack up,’ says Allwright.
In a statement to the BBC, Manicolo explained that Gotham Motors was given to him to settle a debt he was owed by CVF Rochdale when it went bust. He added that since he took over the CVF directors have had ‘no connection with his business’.
Manicolo told Car Dealer today: ‘It was a highly edited programme.
‘When CVF closed down, as an employee I was owed five months salary and expenses, so they gifted this business to me which already had an FCA licence to settle the debt.
‘I wish they hadn’t now. They [the BBC] have targeted an employee of the business not the directors. I’ve taken all the grief for this.
‘The camera crew were in the building for 10 minutes giving me grief and my head valeter could see it needed stopping.
‘The only way these things end is when the person being interviewed runs off or the camera crew are thrown out and I wasn’t going anywhere.’
The BBC’s Matt Allwright questions Phil Manicolo
Manicolo said one of the cars featured in the show was on sale or return and another was showing outstanding finance because the provenance check hadn’t caught up with the fact the finance had been paid off.
He added: ‘Dealers up and down the country have cars for sale with outstanding finance on them and they settle them. Many have stocking loans which is a form of finance. We’ve bought dozens of cars from auctions that have had finance outstanding on them too.
‘This programme was edited down and many of the things I said to explain what had happened were cut out.’
Manicolo told Car Dealer he is considering what to do next as the bad publicity from the show has been damaging.
‘It’s killed it on its arse,’ he added.
Gotham Motors advertises its cars on Auto Trader and the marketplace had told Car Dealer today that it was ‘in the process of terminating their account’.
A spokesman said: ‘We take the security and safety of consumers on our marketplace very seriously.
‘As soon as this issue was brought to our attention, we investigated the retailer concerned, and have subsequently made the decision to suspend the account and are in the process of removing them from our platform.’
Logos for premium car brands Aston Martin and Lamborghini can also be seen on the walls of the Gotham Motors Group showroom.
A spokesperson for Lamborghini added: ‘Automobili Lamborghini confirms that Gotham Motors is not an authorised Lamborghini dealer and the matter is being managed by its legal department.’
Pictures: BBC One, Morning Live
