Mike Pilkington, managing director of Manheim's Remarketing division, said: 'It's always highly regrettable when any remarketing supplier fails but, however prominent Autoquake had become as a specialist quasi-retail sales channel, their business model was always going to be a challenging one. In fact, when they first launched their proposition over five years ago, backed by the first of three substantial tranches of venture capital funding, we expressed our views then about the difficulties they would encounter. 

'Autoquake claimed at the time they would be successful by "taking a link out of the value chain" and, by that, they meant removing the need for wholesale remarketing. We felt this was somewhat naïve, as success in today's competitive market is driven through a proposition which offers speed to market through a choice of physical and online sales channels, coupled to an infrastructure providing logistics, inspections, reconditioning, vehicle imaging and preparation. Then it's about generating highest value by marketing vehicles to the most appropriate buyers from within the massive buyer database, which Manheim for example maintains.'

BCA's communications director, Tony Gannon, added his views on the Autoquake operation model: 'The retail and wholesale markets are quite different from one another and the existing business models based on retailing through dealerships and wholesaling via auction and other remarketing channels are tried, tested and successful. The Autoquake model set out to offer something new by providing an online retail proposition to the consumer for used vehicles sourced direct from the fleet and leasing sector but unfortunately the reality has fallen short of the vision.'