How we judge Used Car Awards, Carwow’s latest purchase and mixed fortunes for car supermarkets

Here's a look behind the headlines and the stories you cannot afford to miss from Car Dealer this week with our editor-in-chief

We’re still slap bang in the middle of results season and this week the team and I have been busy digesting the accounts of some of the biggest car dealer groups.

Quite a few are somewhat overdue now, but this week we saw the arrival of Big Motoring World’s numbers, Amari Supercars and Chorley Group. They always make for interesting reading and in this week’s Substack I’ve summarised the most interesting for you.

There’s also news of another Carwow acquisition as well as a little bit of insight into how our Used Car Awards judges do their job. The Nominations List for our big event, naming those firms that are in the running for one of our top accolades, was published on Monday.

Also featured in this week’s briefing are:

• Chorley losses

• Amari profits

• Cathedral Motor Company results

• Motorpoint’s performance

• EU-China trade war

• JLR news

Ok, let’s get into the headlines and my take on the week’s news. 

To read this weekly briefing, you need to be a subscriber on Substack. It’s delivered directly to your inbox every Friday and via the Substack app.

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What’s happening?

While the team has been busy working on our Used Car Awards, I made the trip to London yesterday for the News UK Motor Awards, the publishers of The Sun, The Sunday Times, The Times and a host of radio stations.

If you’re wondering how I made the front page, The Sun has a photo booth in a mini London bus in its reception and it would have been rude not to try it out…

The newspapers’ motoring editors handed out a variety of awards to car manufacturers for everything from the Best Dog Friendly Car (Skoda Superb Estate, what else?) to The Sunday Times Car of the Year (Porsche Macan EV, an interesting choice).

But while the awards were interesting, it was the conversations I had with the gathered motoring industry PR people that was even more fascinating...