JLR’s decision to cancel its planned move to the so-called agency model of direct selling to customers is the clearest sign yet that car makers are rethinking their shake-up of their distribution system amid a return to discounting.

Car makers that have pushed back their announced agency switchover include Mini, which reportedly moved its planned UK rollout date from October to 2025, and Vauxhall-owner Stellantis, which announced last year it was delaying its UK changeover to 2026.

The agency model – in which car makers sell to customers via their dealer ‘agent’ in return for a flat fee – was born of a desire by the car brands to get closer to the consumer as they go through the increasingly online process of buying a car.

Agency was also seen as a way to control the high cost of getting cars from the factory gate into the hands of the consumer, estimated by one analyst to be around £7500 or 30% of the cost of an average family car.

Many agency plans were conceived in the atypical period directly following Covid, when shortages of stock meant it was easy to fix a ‘no-haggle’ price across all platforms, including online and at the dealer.

However, those car makers that have switched discovered the realities of stimulating sales in an increasingly competitive market required access to time-served dealer sales methods that the agency model stripped away.

“The problems that have been experienced, particularly since the return of normal supply conditions, have included poor process and IT readiness, and an incomplete understanding of the complexities of retail and the customer journey,” wrote Steve Young, head of automotive retail consultancy ICDP, in a report published in February.

The need to shift metal – especially electric cars under VETS (the vehicle emissions trading scheme) – as demand plateaued was more easily met by the car makers that still operated a traditional relationship with the dealers. In this so-called ‘wholesale’ model, the dealers buy the cars from the manufacturer and, if necessary, sacrifice their profit by discounting them in order to hit monetised sales targets.

Under agency, that flexibility had been removed. “Pricing levers have been too limited in their effect, resulting in using blunt instruments such as turning the demonstrator fleets faster and even pre-registration of cars through dealers to generate 'nearly new' used cars,” said Young.

While smaller car makers such as Volvo switched, Mercedes-Benz was the brand everyone watched after it became the first sizeable player to move to the agency model at the beginning of last year. 

Mercedes initially paid a 5% agents fee to dealers on each car sold, before increasing that to 6% on EVs, we learned from US giant Penske, which owns premium dealer group Sytner.

CEO Roger Penske has been updating investors about the progress of the agency and back in October said Mercedes had started giving Sytner stock cars “so there’s some incentive to sell off the floor”. 

The ‘pure’ agency model shifts dealer salespeople to become more product specialists on the understanding that sales are now handled by the car maker, not the dealer. Because the dealer doesn’t own the stock, even the demonstrators, there’s less incentive to hard sell because there’s no dealer money tied up in the stock.

But Mercedes has obviously found the transition difficult, leading to a delayed rollout of the agency model in other European markets. “I would say that we are learning and I am certain Mercedes is learning too,” Penske said. “We understand [in] other parts of Europe where they were going to introduce it, they are pushing it back because they are learning a lot about what’s going on in the UK.”

Many brands also looked to Tesla’s direct sales model, which it continues to this day from its own network of stores. All-electric start-ups such as Polestar went down the same path, but they have since found that outsourcing some of the load to the dealer is a quicker route to growth. “We see that the fairly theoretical idea at the beginning needs evolvement,” Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath said in February. “This enables a certain degree of higher autonomy with less central steering, a bit more responsibility into the markets and into the individual spaces [dealers] just in order to drive performance.” Fisker is another shifting away from owning its own showrooms to signing agreements with established dealers. 

Tesla’s transparency in pricing might eradicate the unloved process of haggling – another of the stated aims of agency sales – but harms the second-hand prices. “Having a list price that goes up and down is poison for residual value setting,” Tim Albertsen, CEO of leasing giant Ayvens, told investors in February. “VW has probably given much more discount than Tesla ever did, but they do it hiddenly. It’s much more healthy for residual values.” 

Rather than price cuts, Mercedes offers discounts on its website, proving perhaps that there’s a middle ground. For example, by the end of March, buyers can get £2000 off an EQA electric compact and £3000 off an EQB electric SUV.

Moving to agency was always going to be difficult, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing, argues Young at ICDP. The ability to control the whole process and follow the customer through the sales ‘funnel’ will ultimately help relationships in the move to a digital experience. It should also reduce costs.  

“Agency in theory gives the manufacturer absolute control over pricing, the right to determine the IT ecosystem as it relates to new cars, and control over all inventory,” Young said. “As we have seen over the last year, their ability to handle these things well often falls short of the theory.”