Car dealer cuts jobs on low sales

Inchcape runs dealerships for a number of carmakers

Car dealer Inchcape is to cut jobs across the UK due to falling sales.

The firm, which employs about 6,000 people in the UK, said it was unable to say how many positions would go as part of its plans to reduce costs by £50m.

UK like-for-like sales fell 11% in the three months to 30 September, against a year earlier, and Inchcape warned that profits would be lower than expected.

The company runs dealerships for a number of carmakers, including Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota and Mazda.

Plunging sales

Inchcape said that as a result of the falling sales, its profits would now be less than previous market estimates this year, while 2009's would be "significantly lower".

"We are undertaking a substantial overhead reduction programme to right-size the business in the light of current market conditions," said the company.

News of job cuts at Inchcape came after official industry-wide figures showed that new car sales in the UK plunged by 21.2% last month, the biggest drop since the early 1990s.

The company's UK operations account for more than 40% of its total turnover.

Its other core markets are Australia, Belgium, China, Greece, Hong Kong, Russia, and Singapore.

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In a previous version of this story we erroneously stated that Inchcape's like-for-like quarterly UK sales were down 40%.