The John Martin Group has opened its first Mazda dealerships, as forecast earlier this year (AM, April 23). Branded Murray Mazda, the two new dealerships are built alongside the group’s existing Murray Volvo franchises, northeast and west of Edinburgh city centre. Total cost for the development is in the region of £500,000.

“We are aiming to transmit our very high standard of customer satisfaction from Volvo to our Mazda customers and be truly customer focused,” says Gavin Kynoch, sales manager for both Mazda and Volvo at the Seafield branch.

Both dealerships are the same size, with space for seven new cars in the showroom and 15 used cars outside. They share identical sales targets for 2005: 250 new, 250 used.

John Martin Group (JMG) says it intends to run each multi-franchised site as a single entity.

Each marque has dedicated sales and service staff but with some flexibility expected between them, especially on the service side, with some staff multi-skilling to improve efficiency and cut overheads. Each site has 35 staff in total, 10 for sales, 25 for service. Seafield has an eight bay workshop, Sighthill has 10 bays.

Asked why the group had decided to go with Mazda, Michael Duncan, dealer principal at Sighthill, responded enthusiastically: “You just have to see the sales figures this year (up 36% YTD August 2004) and the new models coming through. It’s a different product now. It’ll be a good franchise, they are well, well ahead.”

JMG is 33rd in the AM100 with a turnover of £207m. Its franchises are split into three brands: Rolls Royce, BMW and Mini trade as Dunedin; Vauxhall, Peugeot and Citroën as Belmont and Volvo, Lotus, Aston Martin and now Mazda as Murray Motors.