The first Edinburgh dealer to relocate out of the city was Tommy Gilroy, who used to sell for Citroën, Fiat, Simca, Standard and more while also running a hire car fleet. In 1963, he moved from East London Street to a substantial patch of waste ground by a chicken plant nine miles west.
“People thought he was mad,” says his grandson Peter Gilroy, who still works in the motor trade. “There were no garages outside Edinburgh. But he was offered a reasonable amount for East London Street, and his thinking was that if someone wanted to buy a car, they would come to him. He was right, I suppose.”
He certainly was. A Mercedes-Benz dealer took over the site in 1975 and has since been joined in Newbridge by BMW, Jaguar, Kia, Land Rover, Lexus, Mazda, Nissan, Tesla, Volkswagen and more.
Sole survivor
Central Edinburgh’s only remaining prestige dealership is the Rolls-Royce site operated by UK-wide group Grange Motors. From 1982, 1 Corstorphine Road was home to Eastern BMW, which in 2009 moved to a plot almost five times the size out at Newbridge. Grange took on the site two years ago.
“It’s a phenomenal space – the best showroom in Scotland, I think, by a country mile,” says Rolls-Royce dealer principal Roddy McAllister.