Mitsubishi Motors UK is preparing to relaunch its Red Zebra used car programme in October to cope with an expected increase in capacity over the next two years.

The programme will be rebranded as Mitsubishi Red Zebra to create greater customer awareness in the operation, which was suffering from its unusual name.

“The Red Zebra name means nothing, but it is distinctive and memorable, so by adding Mitsubishi, it becomes clearer to customers what the programme is,” says Lance Bradley, Mitsubishi director of sales operations.

“The scheme needed to be more clearly focused on what it wanted to achieve - dealers were saying it was too expensive and customers were having problems finding cars and navigating the website.”

Mitsubishi has cut dealers' weekly fee from £80 to £30 and has signed up HPI to manage the stock management system. The company website has also been redesigned. The 131 Red Zebra dealers are now linked to a better structured trading system, enabling them to offer customers a wider range of used cars by sourcing models from other showrooms nationwide.

They have been asked to establish a clear stock turn policy to improve capacity and maximise revenues from the used car business. Volumes are increasing as Mitsubishi's new car sales rise.

The company will be launching the new Colt small car in 2004 which it believes will lead to a surge of trade-ins. “This will be a challenge for dealers as most of their business is 4x4s,” says Bradley. “They will be receiving more small car trade-ins and will need to be proficient in dealing with these.”