The Best Car Finance Blog In The World

I recently heard at a Motor Industry conference, to the point of annoyance, about the continued move towards the totally connected car. Manufacturers seem obsessed with the collection of data for a number of reasons. Some data helps them with the design of future vehicles, collecting information such as true MPG, emissions, faults and systems failures.

This information along with other data/information relating to where the vehicle is during working hours, scheduling servicing, monitoring deliveries and customer calls, calculating running costs and evaluating efficiency can help larger company fleet managers. Personally, a driver could use data to challenge speeding fines, tickets collected by cloned cars and identify ‘cash for crash’ scams.

But this increase in data collection could have sinister implications. Especially as there seems to be no differentiation between the cars that are bought or leased by large fleets and those bought or leased by SME’s and consumers. Within the large organisations employee rights to privacy are laid out in their conditions of employment but what about consumers and SME’s running cars within their businesses?

I don’t recall any customer ever being asked to sign a release allowing manufacturers to collect data from the new cars they drive. And when does the transmission of data stop. If you buy a used car that is 2 or 3 years old does data collection continue. Also if you are connected to the Internet it would seem that not only Google, or whichever search engine you use, can collect search history, so can the manufacturers it would seem.

And if large companies can collect information about where their drivers have been or currently are located why can’t a crook with a bit of IT nous do the same to find out where you are before breaking into your house? Or if the vehicles are out on business a competitor could see where all your sales and delivery staff are and target the same clients. We are entering a dangerous world and one over which we are having less control.

Little did I know that when I explained that you should clear down your telephone contact list held in your car when you sell it or return it at the end of your lease, that so much more data was likely to be collected and passed on. And how do you clear that down and prevent future transmission? We need legislation to protect us and our businesses urgently, it is a big flaw to this whole Big Data tsunami! Oh and I don’t doubt that the private eyes out there preparing divorce cases are all over this like a rash!!! By Graham Hill

For years pundits have been predicting the demise of main dealers. The emergence of brokers, the Internet, car supermarkets have all caused the prophets of doom to claim that dealerships would cease to exist other than to sell used cars and carry out service and maintenance.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

But of course no such thing ever happened and dealers happily sell as many new cars as ever. But following the last warning could that be about to finally change? When Hyundai ‘set up shop’ in the Bluewater shopping centre near Dartford in Kent it was predicted that this futuristic way of selling cars was like garlic bread as Peter Kaye would say – ‘The Future’.

They gave the shop a funky name as well to appeal to a younger audience, they called it Rockar and added an equally funky futuristic web site to support the ‘shop’. The idea was to put car sales where people were in numbers rather than stick the dealership out in the middle of an industrial estate where people wouldn’t just drop in they had to make a concerted effort to go there. So a year on – did it work?

Replacing hard nosed salesmen with softly softly ‘angels’ providing advice and support rather than selling was a big change – did it work? Are we now going to see a move away from coffee shops in shopping centres to be replaced by car shops from every manufacturer? The answer is – possibly – moving towards probably.

Hyundai clearly don’t want their competitors to know how successful they have been but Auto Express has managed to collect some statistics. After just a year Rockar is in the top ten of Hyundai dealers for cars sold – good start. A massive 163,000 people have walked into the store over the last year.

The average age of the visitors is 39 compared to the average age of visitors to other dealerships which is 52. This average age was mainly as a result of the massive success they had with the scrappage scheme which was taken advantage of by older drivers. Women accounted for 54% of the customers, roughly double the number in other Hyundai dealerships.

And half of Rockar customers transact online after visiting the store in person. Whilst Hyundai played down their success by pointing out that they will never be without a network of bricks and mortar dealers but added that the increased use of the Internet in the transaction means that customers are moving closer to Bricks and Clicks.

It was a big and expensive gamble for Hyundai to take but is seems to be working as they announced another Rockar store next month in the Westfield shopping centre in Stratford, East London. Maybe it won’t be long before we see other manufacturers not only follow suit but maybe create their own shopping centre and we will see the Ford Centre or the Mercedes Centre – you heard it here first.

As the credit crunch bites harder funders and brokers/intermediaries fight each other for the lowest rates on the Internet to encourage you to use them, sometimes as a result of lying and conning. So now is the time to be very very careful as to which company you use to provide your car if you want to avoid problems in the future. Probably the most important fact to be aware of is that the person you place your business with on the Internet is not working for the funder or the dealer – he is actually working for Read more »