Last year I contacted www.orangewheels.co.uk about a new Golf Match TSI auto. I was passed to Dane Chester and was offered a discount 3 per cent greater than local Volkswagen dealers and a delivery of “about two weeks” instead of four months. The additional £100 delivery charge seemed reasonable for a distance of over 200 miles.

The two weeks proved optimistic, but I was sent a similar courtesy car from Chester to use for the five days of delay before my new car was delivered. This year my wife bought a new Honda Jazz SE auto by the same route, being passed to Chester Honda. Local dealers confessed they could get ‘nowhere near’ the orangewheels discount. As previously, a delivery driver arrived at breakfast time wanting only to be taken to the railway station.

We cannot praise too highly the efficient and pleasant way in which both sales were conducted. Are southern dealers missing something? I became the registered keeper of the Golf and my wife became the registered keeper of the Jazz, both from the start and our names are on the V5C documents, so they were not pre-registered to get fleet discounts.