Vauxhall juggles Web and dealers

Vauxhall Motors is to sell cars direct to customers through its Web site for about £1,000 less than the equivalent cars in any of Vauxhall's showrooms. Cars can be ordered online and will be delivered within a week by the nearest Vauxhall dealer.

The company, owned by General Motors, claims to be the first car manufacturer to offer such a service in Europe. Daewoo, which has no dealers, launched a site offering direct sales in the US in February (see http://www.silicon.com.a28318 ).

Vauxhall will sell six .com vehicles which are expected to be about £1,000 cheaper than showroom models. The site - http://www.vauxhall.co.uk - will go live on 1 November.

One Vauxhall dealer, Phil Jeffrey, managing director of Vauxhall Phoenix in Wandsworth, London, said: "This is good news - the Internet is not going to go away - we already get loads of enquiries and people buying parts through our own site."

A spokesman for the Retail Motor Industry Federation said: "I met a group of Vauxhall dealers yesterday and they are quite happy with this. This takes advantage of both the chain of 500 dealers and the Internet."

The site will also offer financing, the ability to set up test drives and provide a guide to the likely value of trading in their car.

The news comes in the same week that http://www.Totalise.net set up a site offering cars imported from Europe at savings of up to £5,000.

The Consumers Association also announced this week that it will offer its members help with the paperwork involved in importing a car - at a potential saving of 40 per cent - from mainland Europe.