A UK car retail and leasing group, formed in 2024 from Jardine Motors, Stratstone, Evans Halshaw and Pendragon businesses, with over 160 sites.
Lithia UK is a motor retail group. Through its Evans Halshaw and Stratstone brands it sells and services new and used cars. Driveway Vehicle Solutions provides vehicle leasing, and Quickco supplies wholesale vehicle parts. It says it has over 160 sites across the UK and more than 5,000 people, whom it calls Associates. It serves hundreds of thousands of customers a year, both online and in its dealerships.
Lithia UK was established on 1 February 2024 by bringing together several well-known UK businesses: Jardine Motors Group, Stratstone, Evans Halshaw, Quickco and Pendragon Vehicle Management. Some of these names have been on UK high streets for decades, so it is a new company built from long-established ones. This group is part of Lithia Motors, a US car retailer whose story begins in 1946 with a single Chrysler-Plymouth-Dodge store in Ashland, Oregon, opened by Walt DeBoer.
The UK business describes its aim as transforming automotive retail through digital innovation and operational excellence, and says it puts customers at the heart of what it does. The wider Lithia group's mission is "Growth Powered by People". The UK page we read did not list formal values. The parent group describes itself as a Fortune 500 company with over 50 brands and about 400 stores across North America, Canada and the UK, so UK staff are part of a much larger international network.
Its head office, Lithia House, is at Annesley near Nottingham, and its sites spread across the UK. It runs three main parts of the business: franchised dealerships for new cars, a hybrid used car business that combines online and in-person buying, and leasing. Its site emphasises an omni-channel approach, meaning customers can start online and finish in a showroom, or the other way round. That makes digital roles important alongside traditional dealership jobs.
The range of roles is wide. Dealerships need sales and service staff, technicians, valeters and parts teams. Head office and support teams cover leasing, wholesale, finance, marketing, HR and IT. If you are thinking about a career in car retail, a group of this size lets you try more than one brand and more than one type of job without changing employer. Neil Williamson, formerly chief executive of Jardine Motors, was named as the regional president running Lithia's UK operations when the group entered the market.
Website: www.lithia.co.uk
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