It seems that increasingly, when it comes to car dealers, size matters. In most major towns, big new car dealer groups with familiar names dominate retail parks and motor alleys. Many of them are posting handsome profits, at least while business loans are sloshing around and used car prices are buoyant.
But the car market is a big pond, too, with plenty of room not only for large franchise dealers but also smaller ones. Brands have to start somewhere and when they're establishing a toehold it is to these smaller, independent and often family-owned single-site businesses that they turn.
Often, the brand becomes successful, outgrows the relationship and moves to a larger and wealthier dealer in a better location. Alternatively, if the brand doesn't become too big or too demanding, so jeopardising the delicate balance of power that underpins successful business partnerships, the small independent dealer may actually grow with it, establishing an enduring relationship and putting down roots in its local area where it develops a reputation for good customer service and, importantly, constancy in a changing world.
