Bad news though - It looks like the 2nd Midlands MG franchise is going to be closing very shortly if it has not already ‘unofficially’ closed by tonight
NAC are ‘pushing’ the dealerships into installing £60,000+ of new diagnostic equipment above and beyond the level they already have or they will loose the franchise. With so few LE500’s shared between what is in fact quite a large dealership network this is not going to be an economic proposal for many of the dealers even if the franchise is part of a larger garage group. The local dealer has sadly informed Longbridge that they should come and collect the remaining cars they have at the garage as even though the cars have had plenty of interest the economics of selling them are now not so interesting.
Overall only 150 of the 500 cars have been sold so far even though the rumours said it was a lot higher number!! It sounds also like the production of the 500 cars is still not complete either. May be there are too many dealers at present with too few cars (or range) and with a launch of a soft top car in the autumn/winter time with a credit crunch happening, it does not create a good business plan for anyone. With a ZT ‘replacement’ to come out next, the dealers have more than a fight on their hands I think just to survive.
I hope this does not become a trend with dealers closing down and is just a blip here in the Midlands but been so close to Longbridge with so many F/TF’s around, if you can’t sell the LE500 here, it may be the tip of the iceberg of things to come? Hopefully, once the better weather arrives the cars will start to flow out of the dealers instead of the dealers flowing out of the MG family.
