Everything has a natural — or unnatural — ceiling. Britain’s booming market for new cars looks like it has finally hit one. After a few record-breaking years, turbocharged by cheap finance deals, sales are slowing amid weaking consumer confidence and Brexit jitters.
The car market has not been normal for a while. Manufacturers have used record-low interest rates to stimulate sales artificially. Now the SMMT trade body reckons new car sales will fall by 5% this year.
This pessimism has held back the shares of Auto Trader, the website that dominates used-car sales. Guardian Media Group sold its majority stake in 2014 to private equity partner Apax, which promptly flipped on to the stock market in 2015 for a hefty profit. Its days as a