This award enables AM and our awards audit partner UHY Hacker Young to give special recognition for the long-term strategic leadership of a motor retail business.

In the two decades since his business launched at Milton Keynes, our winner, Steven Eagell, has built extremely close manufacturer relationships and has taken selected acquisition opportunities as they came to expand into a significant partnership with Toyota and Lexus.

The outcome is a top-25 AM100 motor retailer by turnover, and one which is among the best performers for return on sales and profit per staff member.

And its portfolio of franchised dealerships, still exclusively representing Toyota and Lexus, now spans from King’s Lynn and Ipswich in East Anglia to Wolverhampton and Birmingham in the west Midlands.

A culture of competition, positivity and personal development underpins Eagell’s business, which expects its teams to be curious and to find even tiny improvements in its processes.