Virgin Cars Ltd was an Internet automobile retailer started by British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson and co-founded by Ian Lancaster in May 2000 as part of the Virgin brand of companies. The speed at which the company was launched was perhaps the most startling aspect, going from drawing board to fully fledged company with logistics, purchase, finance, admin and web-based sales operations all being set up between December 1999 and May 2000 using Logica, the London-based IT services company.
Branson predicted the company would sell 24,000 cars in the first year with a £300m turnover. By October 2000, the company had sold over 2,000 cars, generating £30 million.
In 2001, the company started a subsidiary Virgin Bikes. The company only managed to sell 12,000 cars in total by 2003. Branson opened Virgin Cars' first showroom in Salford, Manchester in May 2003. It was located at the end of the M602 motorway near the A6 / A57.
The company stopped all operations and trading on 22 December 2005. The building which it occupied was stripped of all branding, and in 2008 the site became the new home of the Robins and Day Manchester Peugeot Dealership.
Famous quotes containing the words virgin and/or cars:
“Truly, My Satan, thou art but a Dunce,
And dost not know the Garment from the Man.
Every Harlot was a Virgin once,
Nor can’st thou ever change Kate into Nan.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)