Cartime chief executive Matt Kay has appointed Revilo Group founder Lee Collins as non-executive chairman as part of a bid to improve efficiency and customer satisfaction.

The Manchester-based premium used car retailer – profiled by AM in 2018 – has dealerships in Bury and Rochdale and had already been working with the former Hillendale Jaguar managing director on operational improvements and Kay decided to recruit him on a more permanent basis.

“In recent years the business has grown significantly, we added Rochdale and the 4x4 Centre to our list of locations, whilst also dealing with significant ‘headwinds’ from the arrival of COVID,” said Kay.

“I recently invited Lee Collins to assist me and the management team in the further development of cartime.

“The aim is to improve operational efficiency to help maintain our profitability and improve customer satisfaction. I am pleased to say Lee has now joined the management team on a consultancy basis as non-executive chairman.

“He brings with him a huge amount of automotive experience, along with extensive Board Level experience, not least with Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), having served almost ten years on their dealer council as regional chairman and as the UK sales panel chairman.”

Collins has 35 years of experience in the automotive sector, with Rover, Fiat, BMW and JLR franchises, having started his career as a car salesman at Lookers.

He later sold his car retail group to Vertu Motors for £8.2 million, later selling his own marketing company, Image Red, to the AM100 PLC.

Collins’ current business, Revilo Group, operates consultancy and investment services which aim to deliver operational and organisational optimisation in various types of industry.

Collins said: “Matt and I have known each other for a while now, and it is good practice for rapidly growing businesses to seek the support of other experienced directors to help with their development, to ensure the owner of the business additional management support at senior level, when the demands on their time are excessive.

“To Matt's credit, he had the vision and experience to create Cartime and now, to invite me to join the company during this growth phase, to ensure Cartime has the right management structure, process and procedures in place as it heads towards £100million in turnover.”