ICDP's blog

The news yesterday that Stellantis and Carlos Tavares were parting company came as a surprise – at least to me – given that it was already planned that he would retire at the start of 2026.  The recent problems at Stellantis with high inventories in North America and low sales in some European markets have been well-publicised, so it was clear that the pressure was on, but losing your CEO so that there is then a vacuum at a time when you need clear direction is high risk.

The Jaguar rebranding events last week have certainly succeeded in getting the Jaguar name into many headlines even as they stop production of all models so you can no longer buy a new Jaguar.  There's been a huge amount of comment, mainly negative, on social media and the general press.

The core of ICDP’s activities is our collaborative research programme which has been running for over thirty years at a European level.

Following my post at the end of last week, it was good to see a number of readers of this blog joining our webinar on Tuesday alongside ICDP members and some representatives from the press.  The webinar was for the formal publication of our Top 50 European dealer group ranking that we produce annually, and the presentation slides are available to download from the ICDP website here.

I feel fortunate to have spent most of my working career in a period when the automotive industry and the world at large have been pursuing a path of globalisation.

I attended a podcast recording last night for Autocar, where the two regular co-presenters, Steve Cropley and Matt Prior were joined by a special guest, Jonathan Palmer. 

We had our Autumn ICDP Members’ Meeting in Paris this week which gave me an opportunity to visit the Paris Motor Show as well (a ‘proper’, albeit slightly smaller, motor show, with a very impressive showing by a number of serious Chinese brands), but also required me to prepare a couple of the presentations. 

Last night Elon Musk revealed the much-anticipated CyberCab at an event at the Warner Brothers film studio in Hollywood – a location that has produced both massive blockbusters and monumental flops.  The key question for investors and anyone with an involvement or interest in the automotive industry was which category will the CyberCab fall into?

Long-time followers of ICDP will recognise the image on this blog as one we have used in the past to represent the challenges of implementing change at the same time as having to run the business. 

We’ve been looking over recent months at people issues, particularly in the context of the challenges faced by dealer groups, and the role of the HR department.  People are always at the heart of an organisation but there are three particular areas where dealer groups face specific challenges today. 

I talked in my blog last week about aftersales and that despite it being a significant profit contributor for both manufacturers and repairers, it possibly does not get the attention that it deserves with new car sales taking the limelight, at least within the franchised sector.

Even though aftersales can represent half the profits for an established car manufacturer or a franchised dealer, it often remains the ‘poor relation’ in terms of the attention that it gets by comparison with the more glamorous world of new car sales.

As we come into September it marks the end of the holiday season and the return to work.  I hope that everyone reading this blog has found time to get some rest and relaxation and to recharge your batteries.

Despite the absence of any blogs for the last three weeks, I’ve not actually been away.  The days have shoby getting the ICDP Omni-Channel Cookbook finally completed after some months on the ‘to do’ list (more details here), some interesting client meetings, a classic car rally with my son and several days of hard labour under a baking sun (yes – in the UK!) getting some more jobs done round our house

I had some time off last week in order to complete various bits of work around our house.  I won't bore you here with all the challenges faced but I was reminded of discussion I had many years ago with Sir John Egan, the former Chief Executive of Jaguar Cars, who then went on to the same position at the British Airports Authority.  

We're all familiar with the concept of the connected car, mainly from the point of view of how it affects aftersales with the ability to provide over-the-air updates and to capture data from the car such as fault codes, wear levels and other information that would improve planning of aftersales needs.  

As high temperatures return to a number of parts of the world setting off forest fires that can rapidly surround whole communities, I see a parallel to the challenges that we face as an industry.  Over the last 10 days I've participated (with some restrictions due to Covid) in three events and had a number of conversations with friends and contacts from across the industry.

The image on this weeks blog shows 300 figures in a space of 100 square metres, so less than half the space defined for each brand in a new Stellantis House, less than a tenth the size of a more typical dealership.  As another benchmark, the size of a tennis court is just over 260 square metres. 

I generally try to vary the subject of my blogs each time both because it reflects the different discussions and experiences that I have in the course of every week but also to address the varying interests of readers from across the different parts of our industry.

We are often told that the customer experience in dealerships has been transformed in recent years through more diverse recruitment practises and improved training, reinforced by ongoing customer satisfaction surveys and mystery shopping.