4 months ago
Can a wannabe car dealer have any success buying cars in an online car auction with some help from AI?
Well, in a special two-part episode of the AI Car Dealership Project, that’s exactly what I tried to prove when I headed to Motorway’s London head office for a day of car buying.
You’ll already be well versed in Motorway’s online auction platform and probably spend as much time as I do searching the daily listings. It’s really quite addictive.
But for this video we had a plan to buy up to five cars for the Clever Car Collection and try out Motorway’s delivery arm Motorway Move for the collections.
Full disclaimer time: Motorway offered to cover the cost of the transportation for me for this video to show the service off – and that meant I could bid on cars wherever they were in the country.
I usually look for stock that’s listed near me and that way I can easily go and check it over and pick it up myself. However, this exercise opened up the UK for my car-buying needs.
Jon Reay and I used Auto Trader’s AI-powered Bulk Retail Check to put the day’s listings through its data checks and it spat out a monumentally detailed and lengthy spreadsheet.
Using our powers of deduction, we cut the cars down to fit our profile – under £8k retail, high Retail Rating, low days to sell – all the usuals.
In part one, you’ll see there were some interesting options and I won’t spoil the results for you here, but we did get some winners (and some losers).
Over the following few weeks, I used Motorway Move and Motorway Pay to collect and sort the payments for the cars. Having done quite a bit of this myself now and via Motorway’s collection service, I must say I do find it pretty smooth.
The drivers carried out thorough checks of the cars and were happy to carry out my own requests for additional checks on things that might not be covered. For example, I like to ensure the Bluetooth works in cars, as I’ve had my fingers burnt on expensive repairs for this over the past few months.
All the cars had to have the final price I paid adjusted because of undisclosed damage found by the drivers. In all the cases this wasn’t huge but enough to warrant an adjustment on the price.
A week or so later, all the cars arrived at base. In part two of the video, you can watch as we take delivery and check them all over.
There weren’t really any major surprises. A red Polo I bought did have an issue with the air conditioning that needed fixing – something that turned into somewhat of a saga – but it sold along with all the others I bought.
Three of them were sold within three days of them arriving and the others less than three weeks later.
Trusting someone else to go and collect your cars for you is hard, but it is possible. Motorway’s appraisal app for the drivers allows them to take detailed pictures of any extra issues they see, and I like the fact that back in the office you can easily compare the differences between the advert and the car you’re actually buying.
It’s hard for these auction platforms, as they are relying on consumers to detail their cars properly in the first place, and while Motorway uses AI to assist in the listings process, invariably there will always be things not spotted.
But what’s important is that if you trust a company to collect the cars on your behalf, you can trust them to act as your eyes and ears, and I’d confidently say that from this experience you can.
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