In October, online retailer McCarthy Call-a-Car performed impressively. used-car retailer, meanwhile, generated business in excess of R1,7 million for its subscribing dealers.Autolocator used-car retailer, meanwhile, generated business in excess of R1,7 million for its subscribing dealers.content here
McCarthy Call-a-Car, the leading online car retailer and call centre service operated by McCarthy Motor Holdings, sold no less than 727 vehicles last month. Autolocator used-car retailer, hosted on CARtoday.com among other sites, generated business in excess of R1,7 million for its subscribing dealers. Is the South African motor industry in the midst of an online car retailing boom?
Lourens Botha, the managing director of McCarthy On-Line, said on Wednesday that Call-a-Car sales this year totalled 6 800 new and used cars. March was the record month with 745 car sales, followed by last month with 727 units.
"The average for 2001 is more than 680 vehicles per month,” said Botha, who added that McCarthy Volkswagen had the largest Call-a-Car share, marginally edging out McCarthy Toyota, followed by McCarthy Nissan and McCarthy Mercedes.
Botha said convenience was the largest contributor to the success of Call-a-Car as an increasing number of motorists preferred to search for, arrange a test drive and ultimately purchase a new or used vehicle with the click of a mouse or by making a phone call.
But Call-a-Car was not the only online retailer to achieve success in October. Autolocator, in only its fifth month of operation, generated business of more than R1,7 million for its subscribing dealers.
"We are very excited by these figures as it represents an increase of over 100 per cent month-on-month for the third successive month" said Mike von Hone, managing director of autolocator. "Subscribing dealers are beginning to see real value from our service and we continue to sign on subscribers from all geographic regions of South Africa".
“The growing number of enquiries from the public has been tremendous. We received over 850 enquiries during October from visitors to www.autolocator.co.za and autolocators at www.CARtoday.com, www.iol.co.za, www.wesbank.co.za, www.iafrica.com and www.msn.co.za.
“We are making good progress on all targets and look forward to clearing the mark of 1 000 completed enquiries per month soon. We continue to improve our service levels and our closure rate is improving on a monthly basis.”
Consumers who purchased a vehicle through autolocator over the past two months have been entered into a competition, in which they can win R5 000 free petrol. The competition runs until mid-December with the winners being announced before Christmas.
"Having already achieved our year-end goal of facilitating over R1 million of business per month for our subscribing dealers, we have our sites firmly set on the R2,5 million-per-month mark. We are confident of achieving this early in the new-year,” Von Hone said.