Dennis Cook is proprietor of Warrington Vehicles Centre, which he
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set up in 1986 to sell a range of used vehicles. Ten years later he took on an Isuzu agency, offering full parts and service backup from day one. Today, the company specialises in new and oneowner/low-mileage used CVs from car-derived vans to 7.5-tonners.
"We find the 7.5-tonne NQR is the most popular Isuzu model, although the 3.5-tonne NKR is also selling very well," he says. "Al Self Drive, our own hire company, uses the 7.5tonner. It has a GTW of 8.25 tonnes but can still be driven on a car licence. We normally change our 3.5-tonners after two years and we had originally planned to keep the 7.5-tonne models for three; but we're revising our policy in view of the three-year warranty and roadside backup. If we sell them on after two years the new operator will benefit from a full year's cover.
"We find that good examples of all light commercials sell above book and there is even more reason for the Isuzu, which is in short supply second-hand, to hold its value," Cook reports. "I have never seen one go through the auction; in fact, we have people waiting to buy them. A two-year-old T-reg model with 100,000km on the clock has a book price of about £12,200."
Isuzu's marketing department says that a typical annual distance is about 50,000km; an NQR is expected to retain about 60% of its original purchase price after two years. Isuzu now has a small but growing vehicle parc of about 3,500 units in the UK. "We are not in the numbers game," the spokesman adds. "Because we deal directly with our customers our priority is with customer care."