By Caroline Shield, Simon Shield Cars
In 1996, Simon Shield borrowed some money from his father-in-law, found a small site in Suffolk, and started selling used cars.
His father-in-law's expression at the time, Simon recalls, was roughly that of a man who didn't expect to see that money again.
He got it back. And this year, Simon Shield Cars turns 30.
To mark the anniversary, Simon sat down with James Baggott and Jon Reay on the Car Dealer Magazine podcast to talk about three decades in the used car trade, what's changed, what hasn't, and what he'd tell himself if he could go back to the beginning. You can watch the full conversation on YouTube, and it's well worth an hour of your time. But here are the things that stuck with us most.
Staying small was the smartest thing we ever did
One of the first questions Simon was asked was whether he'd ever wanted to scale up. The answer was no and he explained why better than I ever could.
"Going from stocking 20 cars to stocking 100 cars doesn't earn you any more money."
We've watched dealers try it. The overheads scale up faster than the profits. The stress scales up faster than the reward. And somewhere along the way, the thing that made the business good in the first place, the personal touch, the careful buying, the genuine relationship with customers, gets lost in the machinery of running something bigger.
Simon and I have always been the only two people here. No sales team. No machine to feed. That means we don't have to buy 20 cars on a Monday because we sold 20 on Saturday. We buy when the right car comes along, from the right person, at the right price. It keeps the quality up and the stress manageable. Most of the time.
Buying right matters more than selling well
Simon is, by his own admission, terribly fussy about what he stocks. It's the thing he's proudest of and the thing that causes him the most headaches.
Since COVID, the sourcing landscape has changed dramatically. Main dealers, who used to be a reliable source of quality part exchanges, now retail their own older and higher-mileage stock rather than passing it on. Auction stock, which Simon used to buy regularly, has become harder to justify: too much uncertainty, too much preparation cost, too thin a margin once you've spent what needs spending.
So we've moved almost entirely to buying privately. From people who know us, from repeat customers, from part exchanges, from word of mouth. It means we sell fewer cars than we used to, roughly half the volume of ten years ago. But we get to the end of the year having made the same money, because we're not haemorrhaging margin on cars that needed more work than we paid for.
The lesson: if you know your stock inside out, if you've met the person who drove it, seen the service history, understood the provenance, you're in a far stronger position to sell it with confidence. And confidence is catching.
The late 1990s were the golden era. And we didn't know it at the time.
Every dealer over a certain age says the same thing, and Simon is no different. The late 90s and very early 2000s were, looking back, the sweetest period to be in the trade.
Cars were relatively straightforward to buy and to fix. Advertising meant a call from the rep at the East Anglian Daily Times once a week, half an hour, a cup of tea, three cars in and three cars out and the phone rang on Saturday. Simple.
Now, advertising one car properly - photographs, walkaround video, Autotrader listing, social media, website - takes the best part of two hours. The reach is incomparably better. But the workload is incomparably heavier. (Which is where I come in. Simon handles the cars. I handle everything else.)
What Simon said that really landed: "You kind of wonder what you did with all your time previously." The answer, probably, is that you enjoyed it a bit more.
Customers have changed. And dealers have too.
Customer expectations have shifted beyond recognition in 30 years, and not entirely for the worse. People know their rights now. They research before they visit. They read reviews. They watch walkaround videos before they've even picked up the phone. The days of turning up to a forecourt and taking whatever you were told are long gone.
That's mostly a good thing. It means the dealers who do things properly, who invest in their reputation, who put the work into every listing, who stand behind what they sell are rewarded for it in a way they simply weren't 30 years ago.
Simon's view is that dealers have broadly got more professional over the years, and that reviews and social media have been the driving force. A good Google rating and a strong Autotrader profile say things about a dealer that no amount of advertising ever could.
There are still bad actors, of course. Simon's position and it's one we hold firmly is that the industry should require formal licensing to trade. No qualification, no forecourt. It would raise standards across the board and give customers the baseline protection they deserve.
The cars we love most stopped being made around 2017
Ask Simon what era of car he'd most want to sell and the answer comes quickly: somewhere in the 2000s through to about 2017.
Good technology that actually worked. Decent engines, proper gearboxes, none of the over-engineered complexity that makes modern cars so expensive to diagnose and repair. Cars that a good independent workshop could get to grips with. Cars that gave you the information you needed without making you feel like you needed a degree in software engineering to turn the radio on.
He's just bought himself a new Lexus. He can barely work the radio.
Cars have absolutely improved in terms of reliability and longevity, Simon would be the first to say so. But the cost of fixing them when they do go wrong has risen steeply, partly because problems that used to cost five pounds and a new spark lead now cost five hundred pounds and a diagnostic session. The technology is better. The bills are bigger.
Thirty years. Same site. Same values.
Simon has been on the same plot of land in Great Bricett, Suffolk, for the entirety of those 30 years. He rents it, he'd love to buy it, but the landlord isn't selling and it sits roughly 100 metres from the main gate of a military airfield, which means army traffic is a regular feature of the view.
It's not a glamorous location. It doesn't need to be. What matters is that when someone drives through the gate from Suffolk, from Norfolk, from further afield, they're buying from people who care about what they're selling. Who've been doing this since before most of their customers had a driving licence. Who still get genuinely excited about a well-maintained car with a good history and a clean bill of health.
"All we've ever wanted to do," Simon said, "is make a living out of the job. Do it properly."
Thirty years in, that's still the plan.
Watch the full conversation
Simon's interview with James Baggott and Jon Reay on the Car Dealer Magazine podcast is well worth watching in full. He talks honestly about the realities of running an independent dealership in today's market — the challenges, the changes, and why he still wouldn't have it any other way.
📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve5Bfx4UNCo&t=2452s
And if you're looking for a handpicked used car in Suffolk — from someone with 30 years of very fussy buying behind him — you know where we are.
📞 Get in touch or browse our current stock at simonshieldcars.co.uk
Simon Shield Cars — Family-run, Great Bricett, Suffolk, since 1996. Handpicked used cars. Honest advice. No hard sell.