A MAJOR dealership group has opened nine used car supermarkets with some major changes.
The sites will focus in high-quality second-hand vehicles and are spread across the country.
Sytner Group has been working on repurposing its CarShop dealerships after the subsidiary brand was shut down in May.
Sytner, which is the UK’s second most profitable dealership franchise, will now open a set of Sytner Select stores to handle their used car retail operations
The company has just completed the redevelopment of its final branch, in Manchester, and will now open the doors to the public at all nine.
There were originally 12 CarShop showrooms, but the restricting has seen three of them cut from the group.
The Doncaster branch has been closed permanently, while its counterparts in Sheffield and Norwich has been sold off to rivals Big Motoring World.
The decision has seemingly been taken to reduce marketing costs as the company navigates the increasingly rocky automotive market.
Sytner chief executive Darren Edwards told Car Dealer: “This will give the group nine Sytner Select Approved Used Cars super-centres, which will be supplied by our franchised dealerships’ surplus part-exchanges, which, given the group’s scale, negates the need to buy cars from auctions and other external sources.
“The future is very bright for these rebranded businesses and we are excited at the potential they offer for providing an enhanced contribution towards the group’s continued success.
“These cars will be advertised on the Sytner Group website, reducing the requirement for a second website and the associated costs with running that.”
Outside of the ex-car shop showrooms, Sytner operates over 140 sites nationwide dealing in new motors.
It comes after a rival group inked a new deal to sell a major Japanese car brand in one of the UK’s biggest cities.
Meanwhile, another used car supermarket made a similar move to close select branches in a bid to boost sales elsewhere.
