While the door is never closed, Brock said the group is not courting additional franchises. Nor does it plan to abandon the focused approach to its steady growth of the past two decades. It’s a sensible approach – data from AMi suggests expansion comes at a cost of reduced profitability per site.

“We need to make sure we stay geographical. You cannot have a geographical motor group if you don’t stay geographical, and our goal has always been to have the businesses within a maximum of 60 or 90 minutes, so if we need to be hands-on and deal with something face to face you can do that.”

“What’s important to us is the structure of the company, and what I don’t want to do is unsettle the gearing of it. Our growth has been quite gradual, and all done from an element of reserves and an element of very limited borrowing. It means we’ve a sound platform, we’re not over-geared (see gearing figures on p58), and if we do have a difficult time, or we need to invest in something, we have the resource.” The scale of the business brings other benefits.

Alongside Patch and Brock are two operations directors and a finance director, and all meet each Monday to set a focus for the week. Brock describes it as being big enough to benefit from an element of scale yet small enough to see exactly what is going on in the business.

“The team of directors, the size and structure of the business all mean we can change things quickly. For example, when we launched the videos, from deciding to do it to having our entire stock videoed was two weeks. It was an amazing result, but you can only do that when everyone rolls up their sleeves and makes it happen.”

Brock said he learnt a long time ago that the way to do well in motor retailing is just to perform. The manufacturers will not tolerate poor performance on sales, market share, customer satisfaction and standards. Wessex Garages has good relationships with all of the brands it represents, and all see good growth.

“It’s a good business, but there’s more to come. The brands we represent will grow, but I think there’s more that we can do. The consumer is going to drive more change, digital technology will drive more change. I think more of what you see today as being interesting will become normal.”