I always like to start the day with a little bit of morning television, if for no other reason than to help me wake-up. Without fail, every morning there’s always at least one item about the dreaded ‘credit crunch’, ‘economic downturn’ or now, officially, the ‘recession’. It usually consists of a news item, followed by an outside broadcast live in somebody’s house, being interviewed about how bad things are. Sometimes they’ll show a downtrodden family that are about to have their home repossessed because they can’t pay they mortgage. Sometimes, it’ll be a middle-aged man who was made redundant a year ago and hasn’t been able to find a job since. They’ll show him sitting forlornly at his computer, scouring the internet job sites, whilst his equally unhappy wife tells the interviewer about how they’ll also soon be homeless if he doesn’t find work soon. That’s apart from releasing the latest unemployment figures, or announcing which big companies will be shedding jobs over the coming months. Sometimes they’ll show a local businessman as he locks up his doors for the final time and pins-up a paper sign that says ‘Out of Business’.

This cheerful start to the day happens at least an hour before I make my daily 15 minute journey to work, and then see the real side of life around the Surrey / Hampshire border town of Aldershot. Bearing in mind that having being subjected to 45 minutes of breakfast TV cheer, I’m usually fairly miserable by the time I arrive at work, as I fully expect to see an empty workshop and reception area, full of forlorn staff, wondering what happened to all our customers. Well, although there’s been a slight reduction in workload, it’s certainly far from the picture of doom and gloom that we see on TV and read in the newspapers.

Many of our regular customers are employed by local hospitals, schools, or other branches of the local authority. They depend on their cars to get them to and from work, to pick-up their children, or to visit friends and family. The car is one item that the consumer really can’t afford to be without. Unlike London, we don’t have a great bus or tube network to get around on, and particularly if you work shifts, there are no viable alternatives to having a car.

These people are almost certainly better-off, in practice, than before the ‘crunch’ due to the interest rate cuts and reductions in fuel costs. If your mortgage was costing £600 a month, it’s probably less than £400 now (if you’re lucky enough to be on a ‘tracker’), so you actually have more disposable income than before. Although you might not want to take a loan (even if you could) and buy a newer car, you can certainly still afford to get yours serviced and repaired properly, and with petrol now below £0.90 a litre, even filling the tank isn’t too unpleasant. Food is cheaper again, and supermarkets, eager to get you spending again, have some excellent deals on at the moment. Sainsburys (as an example) are promoting their new ‘Switch and Save’ line of uneven-shaped vegetables, ‘different’ cuts of meat, that are ‘just as tasty’ and ‘Basics’ white fish (unspecified, but unlikely to be cod or plaice) to help you feed the family for under a fiver!

So, despite what the media would have you believe, there is actually life out there still in the world of ’small business’ Sure, things in the UK have changed a lot, and many people have doubtless lost their jobs, but life goes on. Many of the job losses in the financial sector, for instance, would have very little effect on our business. A previously-wealthy ‘fund manager’, used to his 6-figure bonus, but who lost a fortune when his reckless gambling caused the collapse of his bank, was hardly likely to visit our garage with his Bentley Continental before the credit crisis, so isn’t likely to start using us now! The people who suffer are the local Bentley dealership, with their £200+ per hour labour rates. That same customer, assuming he could just afford to keep the Bentley, will now be looking to save some money on his servicing and so might look for a specialist, instead of the main dealer. He might have to sit on a plastic chair and have a MaxPax instant coffee instead of relaxing on a leather sofa with a Latte, whilst checking his shares (which have all plummeted!) on his titanium MacBook Air using the free WiFi.

Likewise, a regular customer of say, a BMW dealer, might not relish the prospect of paying in excess of £500 for a routine service, when a local independent BMW specialist, staffed by ex-BMW trained staff might do the same job for £300.

Moving further down the chain, we have picked-up numerous customers that were previously loyal to their car’s main dealers, such as Ford, Peugeot, Renault or Volkswagen. We can typically save them around 33% off the cost of their servicing and maintenance, even using genuine manufacturers parts. Our labour rate is usually around 1/3 cheaper, and because we don’t charge for things like ’sundries’, or levy a 500% margin on engine oil, we can save the average customer around £300 a year on their routine maintenance, and a good deal more on ‘unscheduled’ work, i.e. if your car breaks down.

Moving even further down the automotive food chain, some of our own customers that can no longer afford even our modest fees, might decide to try the services of a mobile mechanic. They are even cheaper still, and are OK for many jobs, as long as you don’t mind waiting around for them to come, losing vital bits of your car in the gravel on your drive, and for them not turning-up if it’s raining or snowing!

Right at the bottom, there are a seasoned band of customers that either can’t (or won’t) pay for anyone to work on their cars. For them, the options are either a spot of ‘DIY’ maintenence, the ‘Phone a Friend that knows a bit about cars’, or the ‘Drive until it stops, then throw it away’.

Quite often, I’ll take a phone call on reception from a DIYer looking for some free advice. Usually, by the time they’ve phoned me, it’s too late and their engine’s already in pieces, with oily bolts strewn around the driveway, and an angry spouse shrieking in the background. More often than not, these well-intentioned attempts at fixing their own cars, end in us collecting the car on our recovery trailer, hunting around the car for all the missing parts, buying replacements for the bits they’ve lost, then fixing it properly in our workshop.

When their car is properly repaired and running sweetly again, the relieved owner can now do their bit to boost the flagging UK economy, by opening their wallet and removing their Mastercard! After all, isn’t that what the Chancellor wants?

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