Buy Your Used Car In The UK
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Written by Steve R. Lowry
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Monday, 09 February 2009 |
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If you can't stand the local used car salesman, get on a boat. Ford Motor is reengineering this shady business in Britain.
Ford's U.K. division spent some $350,000 on a year of market research to figure out that surprise! consumers distrust used car salesmen. So in February the company started selling its secondhand autos only after they were certified by the Royal Automobile Club, a Blighty version of America's AAA. Says Mike Wear, head of remarketing for Ford U.K.: "The customer sees that a well known brand is intervening in the used car process, and an independent group of engineers is backing it. This reduces the enormous cynicism people have about buying used cars."
The new old cars carry their own brand name Ford Direct and are selling well. Between February and mid August, Ford unloaded 16,000 used cars, well up from the 5,000 sold in all of 1993.
The cars are done over at a $7.75 million "used car factory" in Essex. RAC engineers use wax markers to highlight dents and point out whatever needs doing to bring the autos up to snuff. Ford employees then make the fixes, and the RAC reexamines the cars before they're shipped to dealers.
Americans will just have to wait for something similarly sensible to appear stateside. Ford officials say the company has not decided whether to import this new idea from the Old World.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 09 February 2009 )
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