Used car appraisal specialist AUTOi has opened up a second channel of used car stock for its dealer customers, direct from independent auction houses.

The move follows AUTOi’s launch last year of Wizzle, a platform helping dealers source fresh local stock direct from private sellers.

The addition of a second source of used car stock reflects AUTOi’s strategy of establishing the B2B automotive equivalent of an ‘Amazon Marketplace’ offering cars to franchise and independent dealers, car supermarkets and professional buyers.

A third channel is due with the launch of a trade-to-trade sales service by the spring of 2017.

All three sources of stock are channelled through AUTOi’s appraisal dashboard, accessed daily by upward of 3,500 dealer personnel.

AUTOi was founded on improving the vehicle appraisal process for dealers, auction houses and smart repair insurers in 2013.

Having established a user base of 1,000 dealer sites AUTOi founder Sébastien Duval (pictured) now sees the platform as an ideal place to bring together buyers and sellers from across the motor retail sector together, using battle- tested technology and communication processes.

He said: “We built the AUTOi appraisal system to focus on vehicle imagery to maximise transparency and build trust between users of the service.

“It was then a natural step to build those processes out into a trading platform, which we created first with our Wizzle consumer-to-trade service.

“Wizzle successfully proved the concept, so we have now linked to stock held by independent auction houses to increase the unit sourcing options for our dealer customers.

“The next step is enabling our dealer customers to trade out of their own overage stock by feeding it back into the AUTOi system and that channel will open in the spring.”

AUTOi’s car trading platform is designed to eliminate much of the potential friction for both sides in traditional cash-for-car transactions which are facilitated online.

Duval said: “AUTOi’s dealer customers have demonstrated their appetite for new sources of used car stock with some of them logging in to view consumer cars on Wizzle every day and buying something every week. 

"We are confident that as we grow the volume of stock available through AUTOi this trading model will prove increasingly useful for dealers everywhere.”