The disposal of Nissan GB of its 13 West Way dealerships has attracted a lot of interest from retailers and suppliers on LinkedIn.
Motor Trader reported that nine of the dealerships in Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Rochdale, Stockport, Altrincham, Coventry, Stourbridge, Oldham and Manchester, including Head Office and group support functions, are being bought by an unnamed party.
“Is it an unnamed group or a consortium of existing directors so it looks like they have sold?” said group aftersales manager at Halliwell Jones, Lincoln Delve.
Other retailers asked why Nissan was exiting retail at this particular time.
“They are not the only manufacturer exiting retail, but then again the manufacturers have never been experts in retail and it shows,” said dealer development manager Malcolm David.
David said that the financial performance for 2020 – the latest available from Companies House – did not give a true picture, given the pandemic. Motor Trader did ask Nissan for the 2021 accounts for West Way.
“The 2020 result is academic when you factor in Covid etc, but it seems to be a common move, and makes you question the benefits to retailers of an agency model if manufacturers see own retail as such a big risk,” he said
Simon Verona, MD DMS Navigator asked whether the disposal of carmakers of factory owned groups would accelerate.
“Is the timing interesting to follow up with an announcement of network restructuring?
“In an age where many brands are moving towards an agency model, does this indicate that OEMs are valuing the benefits of owning their own dealership groups less? Should we expect more of this activity across other OEMs?”
“It seems there seems to be a view that “Agency” also gives the opportunity to require less dealers, earning less money and therefore makes the Retail side of the business potentially unappealing….
“Maybe it’s a merry go round, like with the oil companies, who for decades have switched between owning forecourts to letting others own them,” he said.