dannorris This is a rainy day. Let’s make hay while the sun shines… Last month a gentleman came into the showroom, and perhaps feeling that he should explain why he had decided to buy a car at this precise moment (note to the general public; please don’t feel the need to explain, a credit card will suffice), he came out with one of the classic quotes of 2020. ‘I’ve been putting money aside for a long time, you know, for a rainy day. If this doesn’t constitute a rainy day, then I don’t know what does.’ And you can’t help but see his point. He may not be alone in this approach, and this may help explain the second biggest surprise of the year – the first one being an unexpected pandemic that shut down the world. During lockdown, we said many things – the world would change irreversibly for the better – we’ve seen how nice the planet looked without pollution, so we’d never let it go back to what it was. Until we want to go to the beach at Bournemouth. We’ve seen what a waste of time going to work was, so from now on we’re going to work from home. But now the dressing gown needs a wash after wearing it for two months straight, and perhaps having colleagues - and even a boss - seems better than endless Zoom meetings whilst trying to clean the bath and simultaneously teach two children about the Spanish Armada. We’ve seen the dangers of obesity, and we’re going to do something about it until Maccy D’s opens again and we have government food vouchers in our hands. Not having children, I was able to spend the time looking at forecasting for the financial year ahead. You can imagine
that with showrooms closed around the country and people somewhat preoccupied with trying to breathe, my predictions for car sales for the 12 months ahead were, shall we say, restrained. But as with so many things we predicted from the confinement of our universal house arrest, that was all nonsense. It turned out people really wanted to buy cars. Before the showroom even officially opened on June 2nd, we’d made up for all the sales that hadn’t happened during lockdown – people trusted our word on the condition of the cars without having to see them. By the time we’d been open two weeks we’d reached our forecast target for the whole summer. We haven’t seen business like this since before the Brexit vote in 2016, and it isn’t just at Munich Legends. The whole motor trade is rushing around to try to keep up with demand, everyone wearing the same slightly confused look of ‘why now?’ combined with ‘thank God’. But there’s a newcomer to the business, an incumbent that’s got me even more confused. The online auction. Now, readers of this column (both of you) will know that in my professional capacity, I’m not a fan of the traditional car auction. My feeling is that car auctions, to be frank, are where the motor trade puts cars that they don’t want to retail from their showrooms. We see all too often the aftermath of these events – often a large percentage of the BMWs that go under the hammer end up at ML for a post purchase inspection – and it’s often pretty ugly. Cars described as ‘probably one of the best examples
available on the market today’ which turn out to be barely roadworthy and with the paint peeling off, or cars mooted as being part of this or that famous ‘collection’ when actually the bloke bought it in another auction two years earlier, put it into storage and then decided he didn’t want it after all. I suppose it’s the lack of accountability on the part of the auction house that really grates – ‘read our small print, we just pass on what the customer told us’ – I can tell you categorically that if we took everything sellers told us and put our name behind it without checking, we’d have gone bust years ago. Surely if the statements are true, you can stand by them. If they’re not, don’t print them. But printing statements that are unverified, as if they are the truth, and then effectively saying ‘this may be lies’ does seem a little bit like sharp practice. Or maybe I’m being too fussy. Of course, you can go and see the car before the auction. But if I had a dollar for every car I’ve seen on the ground and thought ‘looks lovely’ only for a technician to run up a five grand hitlist – I’d be on the beach rather than writing this article. During lockdown, the demise of one of the country’s biggest auctioneers brought all this into sharp relief – and may just about sum up the whole sorry business. Pre lockdown, I had an 850CSi at ML, dropped off by the
Forecourt sales are reported to be surprisingly strong for modern classics.
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BMW Car Club Magazine August 2020
www.bmwcarclubgb.uk
