Another local Motorcycle firm has closed - Pidcocks (BMW dealer).

[McCabe-Thiele (Ted)]

Pidcocks a family run firm  had a good reputation locally but now sadly closed.

Never used them myself as BMW's were never in my price range, I was more of a Bob Minion & Granbys type customer.

[Bryanj]

Bransons in gloucester and other places gone as well, part of completely motoring group.
EDIT, Bransons was bought by Thunder Road which was part of the Completely Motoring group that went under

[Murf]

I guess you mean the one in Long Eaton that’s a surprise, such a long established dealer,  I would have thought BMW were selling ok as when I have been touring everyone seems to have a GS.  Never my thing though and very expensive. 

Pidcocks also have the Triumph franchise has that closed as well?

There was so many motorbikes shops back in the day.

[McCabe-Thiele (Ted)]

Looks like the main holding company is insolvent.

https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/local-news/dealerships-close-jobs-uncertain-after-9660603

[Murf]

Yes it seems all 3?shops closed, Ducati, Triumph and BMW dealerships, looks like there might be interest from somebody to take on the BMW dealership.

[Laverda Dave]

A good few Harley dealers have also gone. Some very famous names have recently closed down, Goombridge in the south being one of them. They used to sponsor Eastbourne Speedway.

[McCabe-Thiele (Ted)]

I know the move away from Main Dealerships/Distributers  to the Retail Agency Model in the car trade has caused a huge loss of income with lots of established dealers closing down.

Does anyone know if motor cycle manufacturers are going down the same route and adopting the Agency Model whereby more profit is retained by the manufacturer at the expense of dealer margins?

[Athame57]

Unless you want  a scooter maybe we will end up reduced to buying on line. 

[Bryanj]

Few years back a local respected non franchise dealer gave up because all 125 had to be fuel injected and abs but no manufacturer was commiting to the idea, most of his working profit came from the acessories needed by a new rider(helmet, clothing etc) so he decided to give up and convert the property into flats

[Laverda Dave]

There are a few video's on YouTube relating to what is happening with dealer closures.  The facts are most dealers will not take PX of your old bike now because they are sitting on a huge amount of unsold stock frequently worth over £1m.
New bike sales plummeted across the UK this year as a result of the poor summer and this coupled with the fact most bikes are now bought as 'Luxury items ) and there isn't the spare cash floating around these days for such 'luxury items' and you have the perfect scenario, poor new bike sales that are discounted by the manufacturers to shift unsold stock and this has a knock-on impact on exisitng s/h dealer stock. As an example go and look at how the BSA Gold Star is being heavily discounted by the importer coupled with trade in values of £2000 on bikes less than a year old and costing £6,500 when new and IF you can find a dealer (even a BSA dealer) to give a PX (and not helped by QA and wiring loom issues on these bikes).
Freddie Dobbs posted a really good video on this subject on his YouTube channel a few days ago and it is really worth a watch.
https://youtu.be/5Oy96MpvPMs?si=MoHuAnFxdDN44ZA_

[McCabe-Thiele (Ted)]

Interesting video Dave, also his take on what has lead to some Honda build quality issues when they build bikes  outside Japan. He likes the Yamaha XJ900!

When I worked for Inchcape Mercedes  2004-2018 there were a lot of issues with build quality & reliability on the C & E class variants. If you read the Mercedes brochures they never say where the car is actually assembled/built - they talk about German Engineering etc.

Pretty much all of the popular C class vehicles were built in South Africa and elswhere. When Lexus started to threaten the dominance of the Merc S Class a financial decision was made by accountants in Germany that it was too expensive to maintain the build quality and compete on price. MB dumbed down on quality in the rush for volume sales.

Mercedes had several episodes of injector failings resulting in the main injector manufacturer eventually going bankrupt as they had used cheaper internal components contrary to the MB specification agreement - quality reduced due to pressure on prices from MB. It was so bad for many months with new cars breaking down on the owners on the journey home.

If you talk to owners of the old W124 Mercedes (1984-1997) they were built to last, they were over engineered everywhere, they are still trading on that now expired reputation.

[SteveD CB500K0]

My wife had a 2001 SLK230. Lovely car to look at and not bad to drive either as long as you ignore the snide “hairdresser’s car” remarks.

At 5 years old the rust was coming through on almost every body panel. A bit of internet research advised to not touch the 99-03 models with a barge pole due to the accountants dictating the build quality.

They eventually agreed to a full respray under warranty. It was never the same though. Sold it soon after.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[McCabe-Thiele (Ted)]

That reminded me of an E class estate that had the following replaced under the long (20 year?) bodywork warranty, the parts had to be retained for inspection by MB Milton Keynes Warranty Clims inspectors..

Bonett, Boot, 4 doors, Tailgate, front wings, both rear quarter panels, front panel.
Only the roof & body shell were not repaced.

[Laverda Dave]

 I had a MK1 SLK, beautiful car and so well built. The MK1 was built by humans and not robots as the later cars were. When they were new there was a two year waiting list for one. You could sell a new one for a few grand more than you paid for it. I bought mine in 2015 with a genuine 19k on it from new. It was owned by a surgeon who bought it for his wife. The problem it had was that it was a manual and it had a badly worn syncomesh between 1st & 2nd. When I went for a test drive with the owner I understood why. Throughout the test drive she kept her left hand on top of the gear stick and being in central London she was only going from 1st to 2nd gear. I still bought it, I paid £3,500 as it was unmarked with a fsh and immaculate, it drove so well apart from the stiffness when changing from 1st to 2nd but I could live with that glitch. The worst thing about it was the horrible two tone leather seats that were yellow and black along with the door panels and console! I sold it after a couple of years after getting an offer I couldn't refuse. I bought a Triumph Spitfire 1500 to replace it, what was I thinking of😱

[McCabe-Thiele (Ted)]

One of the issues that caused Mercedes  corrosion was linked to the robotic production line in the bodyshop section where the body was fully dipped in a special primer.
There were entry/drain holes in the panel work that allowed the full body to be submerged in primer, holes allowed the primer to fill the cavities then as it was lifted out of the bath drain holes let excess primer run out.
When production was increased for popular models the drain holes sizes were changed  to speed up the filling & draining but it was  several years later when rust started appearing that the cause was identified.
It was established that the corossion was due to the special primer not having reached all the corners as the drain and fill holes sizes were not calculated correctly to match the changes in production line speed. At least that what I told at Dealer level.