As we have all found lockdown comes with some confusing concepts, the ultimate goal of preventing virus spread wouldn’t seem on the surface to be effected by the purchase of a vehicle but when car dealerships were still selling vehicles well into lockdown many were asking questions if delivering a new car to a non-essential customer was within the rules.

While there was no official word on this from the Government the NFDA (National Franchise Dealers Association) and the SMMT (Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders) have both agreed as long as social distancing and hygiene are observed there is no problem with delivering vehicles. However there will still be those who will question the morality of this and may even make brand choices in the future as a result.

The severe toll on businesses through lockdown is forcing creative thinking and selling, customers can’t go out to browse at a dealership so online is the new dealership forecourt. But is the consumer quickly adapting to this new model and do they prefer it? After all second hand car sales have been using this model successfully for a very long time.  Autotrader being one of the longest running online car sales models and even before that their weekly paper publications were one of the most popular ways of selling a second hand car.

There is no dispute that new car sales is being and will continue to be hit hard for a long time to come, but if customers really are taking on aa quick adoption to online new car sales they dealers will need to adapt as just as quick.  Their website will become their new forecourt and will need to attract the consumer as much as the vehicle, there are a lot of options when building a website but one company is so keen to boost online new car sales they are offering their software to dealers for free.  iVendi has fast tracked their development of the ‘Transact’ software to help dealers fight the coronavirus slump. A product they say will have the same ability to negotiate a new bespoke car sale as well as face to face sales have been done up to now.