Buying a used Aston Martin during lockdown.
“People are buying cars during lockdown,” says John McGurk from McGurk Performance Cars, “they’re picking up the phone and saying ‘I’ll have that’.” Great news if you want to buy a used Aston Martin, then, though with a global pandemic still impacting on everything we do, understandably, buying a car presently is slightly different to how it was previously.
Traditionally, McGurk describes the start of the year as relatively slow, with buyers spending January and February driving around and looking at cars, before taking the plunge and buying in March. That’s different in 2021, under lockdown, because you can’t come to a car showroom to browse, so people are doing their research online. And they’re buying now.
“People are well informed and know exactly what they want,” says McGurk, which in many ways makes his job that bit easier. He admits, too, that there’s been a bit of a change in mindset among many, with many taking the attitude that life’s too short to wait to treat themselves. Combine that with money gained from not spending on family holidays, be it summer, ski, Christmas or more, the savings made from not travelling to and from work, eating out and other entertainment, and suddenly you have the means to buy the used Aston Martin that you’ve always promised yourself.
People have reappraised their lives and outlook, then, and businesses like McGurk Performance Cars have had to adapt to enable continued sales, both safely, and legally. Click and collect, once something you’d consider for your weekly shop, is now something you can use to buy a used Aston Martin. McGurk admits it’s a little bit different to a ‘buy it now’ tab on a website, but, essentially, that’s how they’re doing business. “Buyers are calling us, we do everything over the phone and via email,” says McGurk. The process is simple enough, he says, with initial contact and discussions followed by a contractual email and order form, which needs signing. That, says McGurk: “gives reassurance to both sides,” and something he admits having done himself, having treated himself to a motorbike bought entirely online during lockdown.
“I say to people, yes, you can buy a car, yes, you can travel to come and collect it and, yes, you can reject it,” says McGurk. Buyers are covered by a 14 day online distance selling rule, which states that buyers can cancel within 14 days of receiving delivery. This rule only applies if they’ve not actually visited, in person, to collect the car. “We’re very strict about that, we’re not about to send a car to somebody to use for a couple of weeks and have them send it back, that’s just not going to happen,” states McGurk, though having that in place does give some reassurance to the customer. So, too, does reputation, McGurk Performance Cars’ status as a respected, long-established business giving buyers the confidence to buy a used performance or GT car, even if it’s all done by the distance selling means that is necessary during the global pandemic.
Car sales are actually buoyant enough to reduce stock levels across the entire marketplace, McGurk admitting that he’s always looking for good Aston Martins to buy, so if you’d like to sell an Aston Martin, then he’d like to hear from you, too. Lockdown is proving to be a chicane rather than a roadblock to buyers and sellers, alike, and it means McGurk Performance Cars is busy with video walk arounds, short clips and more pictures than ever in lieu of actual visitors to the showroom. All that is driving sales, that underlining that lockdown shouldn’t be stopping you from buying a used Aston Martin, and, indeed, it’s arguably the perfect time to treat yourself…