And that’s not just a flippant statement.  As you may be aware Cymark has been going for nearly 30 years, and have some pretty long standing retailers within the Motor Trade.  So I am being honest when I say that our clients are seeing more new and used car enquiries, per month, than any time in the past 10 years.

So, why are manufacturers throwing lots of money at the job?

We are all familiar with the various brands getting behind the dealer network when we are working our way through a recession or an economic slump. But why are they chasing registrations today?

Well the answer may be slightly more than bragging rights this time.

SMMT figures are really strong on car sales at the moment, but a good percentage of those registrations are from orders taken 6, 9, 12 months ago when cars weren’t available and the electric vehicle world in particular looked slightly brighter.

So while overall enquiries are up hugely, the percentage that are new car enquiries is falling.

I don’t want to be cynical and say its because people don’t like EV’s, but perhaps people don’t like the price they are being asked to pay for a cleaner ride?

Have we just moved people from being consistent new car customers to repeat used car customers?

But is that a problem?

Our enquiry follow up team have been really busy this year, making sure that retailers get the most from their enquiries, with a number of sites saying they were concerned that – if they left it to their own sales team – they would miss opportunities. They just didn’t have enough hours in the day to sort through a mixture of tyre kickers and genuine buyers.

Check for yourself.  How many overdue contacts do you have in the DMS.  Are they all these used car enquiries or are they new car enquiries chasing the big discounts being offered?