As 2025 closed, the landscape settled into an uneasy equilibrium. Inflation slowed, and interest rates edged down, helping markets regain their footing, yet confidence remained fragile.

Markets didn’t crash. Growth didn’t surge. Instead, 2025 became a proving ground: a test of who could absorb uncertainty, reallocate decisively, and keep moving while others waited for perfect clarity.

Industry rankings usually tell us who is the biggest. Occasionally, they reveal something more important: how the sector's structure is changing.

Every so often, a piece of industry analysis lands that cuts through the noise. The McKinsey work on dealer fixed-cost absorption does precisely that: it shines a spotlight on a structural issue that has been building quietly in the background for years, and which now sits at the heart of the profitability challenge facing UK and European dealer groups.

This past week has been one of the most concentrated bursts of activity we’ve seen across UK automotive in some time, with the ALN Winter Meeting, the VRA Automotive Summit, and the Motor Trader Industry Awards all taking place within days of each other.

The era of easy money is over - and with it, a decade-long obsession with scale for scale’s sake.