The parts depot is one example the Smyths say demonstrates a willingness to listen to staff, take risks and innovate. It was the brain child of Benn Conn, once parts manager at the group’s Stafford Audi site and Phil Drury, head of business at the same site.

In 2005 Conn started to sell old parts stock on eBay, selling “leftover and oddball” parts to a willing audience and cleansing the group stock. He then realised there was more of an opportunity than washing through old parts, but that other dealers were looking for a route to offload the same.

The directors didn’t take full notice of what was happening until they noticed the margins being made in Stafford’s parts’ department were way in excess of the expected 25-35% on 14,000 parts sold per month through a ‘platinum power’ Ebay seller account across Europe.

When they did, the re-selling business was taken out of Stafford Audi and given a brand name Parts Depot at a head office compound. Its two founders were made directors.

Like the culture, stand-out profitability has taken time to grow. It took until 2010 for Swansway’s return on sale to exceed 1% (1.52%) and in 2011 it went to 0.85%.

In 2012 Swansway made £3.3 million before tax. It believes it could make £4.5-5m this year – or £6m with every existing site “firing on all cylinders”.

Published results show the group making £1.6m in Q1 2013.

Understandably, staff turnover has fallen from 25% at the last Best Companies To Work For assessment to 18% – 15% is Swanway’s realistic target.

“Motor retail is based on sales. So while you have marketing and accounts departments with long-standing staff, with salespeople you can count the time in post in months. I like to think of a business where the sales staff had been there as long as the other departments and how amazing our sales would be,” said John.

Peter added: “We’re not finished with the culture yet. I don’t know if we ever will be, but the impact of the ground-up approach we had to take with Swansway is beginning to pay off in any number of ways you want to measure it: staff and customer satisfaction, staff turnover, manufacturer CI and CSI scoring and our profitability.”