Car Supermarkets

Car supermarkets are a growing phenomenon, and have been around and increasing in popularity for 20 or so years.

These vast, no-frills outlets are without doubt the largest suppliers of both new and used vehicles, and they often deal in light commercials too. You don’t even have to make your way to a franchised dealer any more to bag yourself a high-value preregistered car, as the car supermarkets tend to have plenty of these in stock as well.

HOW THEY WORK
Their principle of operation is simple, and pretty well identical to that of a conventional supermarket: it’s a matter of piling ‘em high and selling ‘em cheap. That’s not meant to be in any way derogatory, it’s simply that by selling large volumes of vehicles these supermarkets can afford to make only a relatively small profit on each, the sheer turnover of sales making their business fortunes, rather than any one sale.

As an example of scale, the south-west’s largest used-car supermarket, the Bristol Trade Centre, has about 800 cars of all makes in stock. However, across the business group, stock actually exceeds 15,000 vehicles! You’ll doubtless agree that this represents an awful lot of choice.

Another aspect to the business basis of the car supermarket is that by operating from large but otherwise very humble sites usually comprising acres of concrete or tarmac and a basic warehouse-type building rather than the glitz, comfort and potted plants of the typical main dealer, they keep their operating costs very low. Here again this helps keep down the prices asked for the cars.

Because car supermarkets sell vehicles in comparatively vast quantities with relatively tiny margins, you shouldn’t expect to negotiate on prices as you would in a car dealership. Dealers are usually open for a bit of a haggle, even on some premiumbrand models, but you’ll fi nd that the car-supermarket staff tend not to be that interested. After all, their retail prices are already pretty well pared to the bone, leaving little if any room for manoeuvre.

So car supermarkets offer a vast selection of cars at pretty unbeatable prices, and that
means there is the potential for making a significant saving compared with a maindealer
purchase. But if you’re supermarket shopping, don’t expect too much in the way of one-on-one attention as you make your selection; after all, you wouldn’t expect a personal shopper to guide you through a session at Tesco.

POINTS AND PITFALLS
There is no problem in you fully inspecting your candidate car in detail before you buy, but test drives aren’t always available and warranties may be limited, although that’s down to the individual company, and these are things you should check out at the start.

While some car supermarkets will be prepared to part-exchange your old car, others won’t, so that’s something else to ask at the outset. Also, watch out for imported cars with strange specifications and potentially tainted resale value, as these can sometimes find their way into the supermarkets.
Be warned that the keen prices make these supermarket venues popular, so once you’ve spied the car you fancy, it’s important that you act on your decision pretty quickly, as stock turnover tends to be rapid.

Buying from either a dealer or a car supermarket fortunately provides you with the highest degree of consumer protection. You have the Sale of Goods Act on your side, and as most companies want to maintain a good reputation, that works for you too. In addition, if the vehicle has been bought on hire purchase, the fi nance company takes responsibility for the car and can argue the toss with the vendor in the event of any
problem.

When buying through a car supermarket, if something goes wrong with the car or you have a legitimate complaint about your purchase, you have much more legal recourse than if you buy privately or – worse still – than if you buy at auction.

On the other hand, a carefully checkedout used vehicle bought privately can potentially offer better value for money, but only if you know what you’re doing. Be wary though, because once your private purchase has gone through, your legal rights are very limited (there’s very little come-back if you fi nd things wrong with the car) and of course there’s no question of being able to enjoy the convenience of part-exchanging your old car.

Effectively, when you buy privately, you take on both the risk and the footwork that a dealer or supermarket does when buying-in its used stock.

AUCTIONS BEST AVOIDED
There’s always the option of buying a car at auction in order to bag yourself the best-possible value for
money. However, that’s also a likely route to saddling yourself with the biggest lemon imaginable, and not being able to extricate yourself from the problem.

As auction buying requires extensive knowledge of the used-car business, and is actually quite frightening for the uninitiated, it’s not advisable unless you are technically and commercially well informed, so our advice is to forget it and refer instead to a car supermarket for the best value.

Might we suggest you point your mouse at www.car-supermarkets.co.uk to get an idea of how widespread these outlets have become, and how cheap many of their car deals actually are. Happy supermarket shopping!

To browse our used cars used the search on the left.