The BusinessCar Interview: Tim Porter, Lex Autolease

Date: 15 January 2015   |   Author:

Last summer, Lex Autolease opened a new car-retailing site in Coventry under its Car Select brand, following the decision to move to the facility when the lease expired on two separate sites in Birmingham.
The defleet centre has a car showroom selling to the public in person, over the phone and online, and a refurbishment and remarketing facility on site to take some of the 75,000-80,000 vehicles that end their contracts every year. It joins Lex's existing site in Oldbury, Birmingham, and houses 500 used vehicles across the 10 acres.

"The question is, if these two work then why not have 22?" asks Porter. "It's because our main business is leasing cars and fleet management for customers, but it's very helpful to have experience in the retail used vehicle marketplace. It is really valuable experience of what is going on in the used market, but we've got no desire to roll it out."

Investment in technology has helped improve the firm's defleet time, with Porter claiming a lot of vehicles are sold before they reach the showroom. "The ability to sell a used vehicle quickly is very important to profitability," he says. "We have 75,000-80,000 vehicles come back every year, so it's very significant if we can take a day off stock holding - over 7000 vehicles per month means it is a significant difference
to the cash."

The two sites stick to cars sales rather than offering light commercial vehicles, and the company picks out the best cars coming off contract to offer direct.

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