Volkswagen announced in Ocotber that it would restructure its dealer model from 2020, with new sales and service formats joining its dealer network across Europe.

City showrooms, pop-up stores, used car centres, ‘service factories’ and scalable ‘full-feature dealerships’ will all form part of VW's franchised network’s structure after April 2020.

The SMMT's report of September registrations showed that Volkswagen Group brands accounted for 49% of the UK’s total registrations decline of 20.5% (87,336 vehicles) as the brand’s WLTP-related supply woes were felt by car retailers. A total of 42,830 fewer vehicles were registered by Audi, Bentley, Porsche, Seat, Skoda, and Volkswagen in the month than during in the same period in 2017.

The bad news continued for VW Group in October when German authorities fined Audi €800 million (£704m) for violating diesel engine emission regulations on certain V6 and V8 diesel engines and cars. Audi suffered a near-70% decline in registrations in its home market of Germany in September.

In network movements: Stoneacre acquired four Volvo dealerships from Mill Garages Northeast; Marshall Motor Holdings closed its Vauxhall dealership in Leicester and put the showroom on the market; Pendragon opened the UK's first joint Peugeot and Vauxhall dealership at its Evans Halshaw dealership in Wakefield.

While all of these stories were important, worthwhile and well read, they paled into insignificance next to October's most-read story across all AM channels: Escaped cow causes chaos inside Arnold Clark Mazda showroom. The escaped animal caused £1,500 worth of damage to the Stirling site before being safely returned to its field.