One of many prime performing MG dealerships is pulling out of recent automobile gross sales, citing the producer’s exponential development because the principal challenge.
Household-owned Summit Storage in Dudley – which celebrates 80 years in enterprise this 12 months – knowledgeable its prospects this week that it had taken the choice after cautious consideration to stop being a MG Motor UK new automobile gross sales franchise.
“Whereas our partnership with MG has been optimistic, we imagine that refocusing our efforts will higher serve the wants and expectations of our prospects,” it stated
Summit Storage will now consider promoting Authorized Used Vehicles and offering aftersales companies, together with official MG guarantee, servicing and repairs.
The enterprise stated that the strategic shift aligned with its core values of integrity, reliability, and buyer satisfaction – mirrored within the quite a few instances it had been recognised in MG Motors UK annual awards as an aftersales supplier of the 12 months.
Whereas Summit Storage thanked MG Motor UK for the partnership and assist over time, its co-owner and gross sales director John Newey defined to AM extra of the reasoning that led to the choice.
“The motor commerce basically is dealing with some tough instances for the time being with the decline within the variety of prospects truly buying. I do know that MG has in their very own phrases been rising exponentially however the actuality is, this 12 months, there has extra stress with much less and fewer retail enterprise.”
He stated that as a result of a lot of the retail enterprise was being pushed by Motability and fleet gross sales, decrease margins right here had prompted the enterprise to take a strategic take a look at the sustainability of recent automobile retailing.
“There’s been numerous issues which have introduced this to go, however from our standpoint as a enterprise – we’re third technology because it was my grandmother and grandfather that began the enterprise again in 1945 – we felt that as a result of MG has grown so massively, there was a variety of stress on our workshops to have the ability to ship the service in time. We felt that being unbiased would be a greater alternative for us.”
Newey additionally spoke of the price related to financing of recent automobile inventory. “Over the previous few months, what has been evident is that we had numerous additional finance supplied to us via Santander which supplies the MG inventory financing facility.
“Final November, we had a variety of new MG inventory arriving however initially of this 12 months, the market was just a bit bit extra depressed. Even so, we needed to pay fairly giant curiosity quantities on this facility. It was simply not sustainable.”
“We checked out that, and in addition the pressures on our workshops and our service space and we imagine we can provide a greater service to our prospects by being unbiased.”
In time period of future retailing technique, Newey stated that Summit is planning to supply used automobiles from manufacturers that it has not beforehand carried resembling Audi, Lexus and Mercedes in addition to modern-day classics just like MG.
