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TWO Highland Vauxhall dealers have teamed up to buy their Inverness rival and create a market territory the size of Wales.
Mackays of Dingwall and Charles Milne, who runs Regency Car Sales in Buckie and Elgin, bought the Inverness branch of SVL and now command a territory stretching from Fort William in the southwest to Buckie and everything north to the Western Isles.
and the Western Isles. Annual sales, said Muir Mackay, will be 800 units, including some 350 from Inverness.
SVL, formally Saltire Vehicles Ltd, has now dropped out of Inverness and continues a contraction which has seen it leave the Motor Trader Top 200 – it ranked 87th a year ago with sales of £65m.
The acquisition was made through a joint venture company, Autovision, whose directors are Charles Milne, Mackay and fellow Mackays director John Manson.
Mackay said the move was made jointly because his business has a “very, very close working relationship with Charley Milne and Regency” and the enlarged market area needed a bigger pool of management resources than either party had on its own.
But also, he added, “we are good, close friends.”
All SVL staff are being retained, but the site has been without a general manager for two months, said Mackay, who hopes to appoint a replacement imminently.
For SVL, the sale is part of what managing director Bill Dryden described as a “major reorganisation of the group” designed to cut borrowings. At the same time as it sold its Inverness Vauxhall outlet, SVL sold its Inverness Lotus dealership to an as-yet undisclosed buyer.
Last year, SVL sold its four Volvo truck businesses. Last month it sold its Aberdeen Vauxhall dealership to Lawrence Motor Group and in March saw Vauxhall in Kirkcaldy go to Gordon Curtis of Fife. SVL now consists solely of Vauxhall and Volkswagen dealerships in Falkirk.
Dryden declined to comment further but said: “No doubt we’ll come bouncing back.”
The Autovision joint venture is not unprecedented. Earlier this year Mitsubishi dealers in Leighton Buzzard and Princes Risborough pooled their companies to establish a new dealership centrally located in Aylesbury, which the car maker had identified as ideal given the local population distribution.
and the Western Isles. Annual sales, said Muir Mackay, will be 800 units, including some 350 from Inverness.
SVL, formally Saltire Vehicles Ltd, has now dropped out of Inverness and continues a contraction which has seen it leave the Motor Trader Top 200 – it ranked 87th a year ago with sales of £65m.
The acquisition was made through a joint venture company, Autovision, whose directors are Charles Milne, Mackay and fellow Mackays director John Manson.
Mackay said the move was made jointly because his business has a “very, very close working relationship with Charley Milne and Regency” and the enlarged market area needed a bigger pool of management resources than either party had on its own.
But also, he added, “we are good, close friends.”
All SVL staff are being retained, but the site has been without a general manager for two months, said Mackay, who hopes to appoint a replacement imminently.
For SVL, the sale is part of what managing director Bill Dryden described as a “major reorganisation of the group” designed to cut borrowings. At the same time as it sold its Inverness Vauxhall outlet, SVL sold its Inverness Lotus dealership to an as-yet undisclosed buyer.
Last year, SVL sold its four Volvo truck businesses. Last month it sold its Aberdeen Vauxhall dealership to Lawrence Motor Group and in March saw Vauxhall in Kirkcaldy go to Gordon Curtis of Fife. SVL now consists solely of Vauxhall and Volkswagen dealerships in Falkirk.
Dryden declined to comment further but said: “No doubt we’ll come bouncing back.”
The Autovision joint venture is not unprecedented. Earlier this year Mitsubishi dealers in Leighton Buzzard and Princes Risborough pooled their companies to establish a new dealership centrally located in Aylesbury, which the car maker had identified as ideal given the local population distribution.