Any one know what has happened at Whitequay Garage in Faraday Rd. today. All the cars have gone off the forcourt & the Showroom looks in darkness this lunchtime !!

They have gone in Administration. A good friend of mine works there unfortunately.

Would that be the mate who used to do you a cheap job on the side?

No.

That's a shame, we hear a lot about the high street and the famous retail names, so its easy to overlook the less prominent businesses that are suffering just as badly.

They were a very good garage too. I just hope that the jobs have been moved to other surrounding dealers.

I assume that it is only the Newbury Suzuki dealer that has pulled down the shutters. Whitequay are a large privately owned composite dealership in Berkshire with Saab, Kia, Seat, Skoda and Alfa outlets. They also have outlet(s) in Southampton.

Part of the problem for main dealers are the overheads of unsold cars on their forecourts because they have to meet the sales targets set by the manufacturer and if the cars are not attractive to the buyers then the franchise/dealership is in trouble.

No he doesn't!

Yes he does; until the administrator terminates his contract.

It's the Seat/Skoda side of things. It's down Faraday Road in Poobury.

It's a shame, we went in once and very civil they were as well, nice guys.

http://www.cardealermagazine.co.uk/publish...istration/71984

It seems then that it is the whole dealership which is in trouble, not just Newbury.

Trying to sell Saabs must have been hard these last few months. And the Seat dealership in Newbury had laready gone under once.

And who wants to buy a Skoda?

Skoda's are good cars for the money.

What dannboy says about Saabs is more to the point. Good cars once upon a time, but they didn't keep up and develop the models, and then once the company looked like it was in trouble (over two years ago now) it was never going to be a sound buy.

Anyone who wants to avoid paying for a badge.


Incidentally Škoda were the only people in Europe able to make the hub for the London Eye....

The Top Gear segment about Saab was fairly interesting.

Many years since I watched Top Gear. What were they saying?

I've got a Saab 9-3 Aero TTiD and it's great - massively over-specced for the money and looks great. A great marque, and a real shame it went out of business.

The Top Gear feature was very interesting, and quite right in my opinion. They basically said that Saab didn't charge enough for their cars and lost loads on the R&D that went into them.

All of the Saab parts are made by General Motors, who have said that they will continue to make spares for some time to come as there will be an increasingly large market for them as the Saabs on the roads get older.