What Dealer Sold Your Car New

[Gremlin]

Sent off the V888 for my RS2 a while ago and it came back with all of the history apart from the original owner details, so I rang them up and they sent out the same again. No original owner details, any idea why this might be, someone important or someone dodgy who purchased it new ?

[roddymexico]

No, just that someone dodgy has it now.

[RS2000EXPRESS]

I'm sure in the rwd Escort period quite a lot of RS cars were sold by ordinary Ford dealers, not RS dealers. What I'm not sure about is whether they all had to come via an RS dealer to the selling dealer ie. whether Ford would ever release RS cars direct to a non-RS Ford dealer. The cases I know of all involved the non-RS Ford dealer sourcing the car from an RS dealer.
Ford was the most protective of any UK manufacturer/importer of its dealers in some respects. It was a major struggle to get Ford to sell large volumes of vehicles direct to even the largest Government departments (other than in wartime). Their first negotiating stance was always to demand they supplied via a dealer. To win tenders they obviously had to give the dealer they nominated in their response extra discount - and large purchasers usually eventually negotiated the dealer out of the link but it was interesting just how hard Ford tried to keep them in it. No other vehicle supplier was like Ford in that respect.
Conversely Ford had a reputation of treating their smaller dealers like sh*t in their normal relationships...

I was selling new cars for a BL Distributor in the 70's and we took delivery of our small dealers cars, and then they would collect them from us.

I would think all new RS cars were delivered to the RS dealers first, then were distributed to the non-RS Dealer as the RS dealers would want to keep in control of the supply, or else they might as well all be RS dealers! I would also agree that the RS dealers were protective, and they I could see them not being all that generous to give away their cherished RS's. They would have a waiting list of customers of their own for a fairly small supply of RS's especially when first released, and would see them as for making good profit for themselves, not having to discount them much. Models of mainstream Fords were not all that freely available then, as I ordered a Venetian Red Escort Popular Plus in 1979, and it took 6 weeks to arrive!

In general many of these small dealers could end up with their distributors choice, being models that no-one else wanted, crap colours, small engine sizes, basic trim models, obselete models etc.

Tim.

[Bigjohn]

I do not think Earl's were RS dealers. Thet were later taken over by Hewitts. The building has since been demolished and Ford in Chippenham is on the A4 calne side.

As has been mentioned in previous posts about Ford dealers and RS dealers my car with brought in by Godfreys of Cardiff ( an RS dealer ) and was sold to the 1st customer through Earle Of chippenham which were a ford dealer and as you rightly mention jimmer no longer there.

[mexicostids]

my mex came from reeds of paignton mfj900p , think it has stayed in devon & cornwall all its life