10th December 2016

On this Saturday's 45-minute episode of MotortradeRadio.com, Philip Nothard and Derek Blair, discuss the week's headlines from Motortrader.com.

Auto Trader is offering dealers the opportunity to advertise their finance deals on used and new cars for free until early 2018. It will also launch a facility to search by monthly payments in the first half of 2017, profitability at the average dealer plummeted to just £187 in October compared to £7,400 a year ago, according to dealer profitability specialist ASE.

Also in this week's headlines, New car registrations in November rose 2.9%to 184,101 units and year to date registrations are ahead 2.5% to a record 2,514,764 units, driven by Fleet and the UK's new light commercial vehicle (LCV) market soared in November with a record 29,784 units sold.

DS has opened a DS Urban Store at the Westfield Shopping Centre in London. The brand joins Tesla and Infiniti in having retail stores in the shopping centre as the three brands target shoppers.

In other news, The Trade Centre Wales is to open its second new superstore within nine months with the group moving out of Wales for the first time with the opening of a 12-acre, 1,200-car site in the West Midlands in early 2017. The number of vehicle sales completed on Friday 25 November – 'Black Friday' – was 23% higher than on Friday 18 November and 17% higher than on 11 November, according to analysis of sales data carried out by Dealerweb, the showroom management system provider.

Also, we have two exclusive interviews; as Philip and Derek speak to Alan Harding from JA Autos, plus, Derek speaks to Will Blackshaw, MD of Blackshaws, a North East dealer group who are approaching their century in business in 2019. Will talks about MOT Juice who are an agile developer of high yield MOT websites and training & management software for MOT testing stations in the UK.