British Car Auctions

History

In 1946 Royal Navy officer David Wickins decided to sell his Riley Lynx tourer. Placing an advert in the local newspaper, he offered to sell the car to the first person who turned up at his mothers house in Farnham, Surrey with £200. Arriving home late, he found a crowd of eager buyers, and so auctioned the car off for £420.

Wickins then rented a farmer's field at Frimley Bridges, now under junction 4 of the M3 motorway, and set up his first public auction. The 14 cars auctioned sold for a total of £8,250. Wickins and one of his brothers immediately founded Southern Counties Car Auctions Ltd, which after exiting the Royal Navy shortly afterwards he expanded across the UK by selling surplus ex-British Army and Royal Air Force vehicles for the Ministry of Defence.

Renamed "British Car Auctions", Wickins then expanded the company across Europe and the United States through acquisition. This included the purchase of the car auctions division of British conglomerate Hawley Goodall, owned by Michael Ashcroft. This proved to be the start of a lifelong friendship between Wickins and Ashcroft, and through his Bermuda and Belize based holdings in various banks, Ashcroft would finance a number of Wickins later business ventures. In 1987, Ashcroft bought out the existing shareholders of BCA via Hawley Goodall, and closed down Wickins treasured aviation division, which flew both Jet Ranger helicopters and King Airs turbo props.h

The company had head offices at the Frimley Bridges site, but later moved to purpose-built premises at Blackbushe Airport, Yateley to accommodate the now closed aviation division, which it still occupies. Employing 160 at its head office, Wickins built the company into the largest car auction business in the world before retiring in 1990.

A near-scratch golfer, through this and his long association with the Conservative Party, Wickins met and befriended Denis Thatcher. Wickins later agreed to sponsor Mark Thatcher's motor racing activities in the 1980s through BCA. Denis later served on one of Wickins companies boards, while Mark served as chairman of Lotus Cars and later BCA in North America, which Wickins had led from near-bankruptcy to survival.

By 1995, Belize-based Hawley Goodall had undertaken a reverse takeover of ADT Security Services, and renamed itself ADT. As a result of its focus on security systems, it sold the North American and European arms of BCA in separate deals. While the residual North American arm was broken-up and sold to trade buyers, the European arm was sold to a consortia of some 40 private investors, including Lord Ashcroft via his Belize-based investment company. In September 2006, the company was bought by the investment banking arm of private bank Samuel Montagu & Co., a division of HSBC. In February 2010, BCA was acquired by the private equity investment firm Clayton, Dublier & Rice.

UK and Global Operations

BCA is Europe's largest used vehicle auction company, selling well over 1 million vehicles every year. It has 46 branches in 13 countries: United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Brazil and serves buyers from all countries through its auction centres or online. It sells on behalf of a wide range of vendors including:

The company does not generally own the stock it sells, but instead acts as a neutral intermediary between buyers and sellers, with the notable exception of stock purchased through We Buy Any Car which the company purchased in 2013. Auction centres can be found on the group website or on one of the country websites. It uses both physical auction centres and online selling to sell vehicles from 47 centres in 13 countries across the world.

In June 2015, BCA bought SMA Vehicle Remarketing, the group formerly known as Scottish Motor Auctions, in a private acquisition worth £43m.

In 2015 BCA Market Place PLC also purchased Stobart Automotive from the Eddie Stobart Group.

BCA Logistics Limited (UK)

BCA Logistics is the UK’s number one provider of vehicle remarketing logistics services for the automotive sector.

Services offered