business

Drive’s Citroën Franchise Recognised As Best New Retailer

(L-R) Rob Keenan, (Drive MD), Nick Howes (General Sales Manager), Indy Singh (Citroen Sales Manager), Charles Martin (Citroen National Sales Director).

Drive Motor Retail’s Stockton-on-Tees site has been recognised with a Citroën CUBE Award for Best New Retailer for the first half of 2021.

Launched as Drive’s first multi-franchise dealership, the group brought Citroën on board at its Vauxhall site in Stockton at the end of 2020.

The CUBE Citroën United by Excellence programme, unveiled earlier this year, measures sites across the UK in key areas including customer satisfaction, retail achievement and sales volumes.

Chris Shutt, General Manager at Drive Stockton, said: “I’m really proud of the team for securing this accolade.

“This is a new market for us and we’re still establishing ourselves as the local Citroën dealer in the area, so to hit the top spot out of seven new retailers across the country is brilliant.

“At Drive, we have a long-standing reputation for customer satisfaction and performance levels – we lead on these in the industry and now we want to deliver this for our Citroën customers too.

“There is so much opportunity here as it’s only early days. We want to keep getting to know Citroën customers in Teesside, so I’d urge people to pick up the phone or come and see us.”

Based at Preston Farm Industrial Estate, the dealership’s new Citroën showroom is set to be unveiled by the end of the year. The site offers all Citroën models including the brand new e4 and ec4.

Rob Keenan, Group Joint Managing Director at Drive, said: “This is a great achievement for our Stockton team. I think being a new retailer, without the benefit of customer data, is always a tough one as it takes time for a dealership to establish itself and find its feet. For the team to win this so quickly is definitely something to shout about and I’m really proud of them.”

Drive Motor Retail is one of the UK’s largest privately owned automotive retail groups with a turnover of approximately £250m per annum and over 700 members of staff employed in 18 dealerships across the country.

It recently expanded with three new MG dealerships in Darlington, Leicester and Bristol. This growth follows the company being voted Vauxhall European Dealer Group of the Year in 2019 and its dealerships being ranked 1st, 3rd, 4th, 9th and 10th in Vauxhall’s top 170 360 Performance Report 2020.