Totalise may have touched off a new trend in the UK, with another Web site launching to enable customers to purchase cars cheaply from Europe.
What’s more: OneSwoop
is in partnership with Marks & Spencer Financial Services, adding a
big-name
comfort factor to the daring process of purchasing a car overseas.
“We believe that buying new cars over the Internet is the way of the
future,”
say the founders, Roeland and Alexander van de Ven, veterans of the
car retailing business.
It is all perfectly legal, insist the founders, and all the cars are
covered by the usual manufacturer’s warranty. The OneSwoop business
model conforms to EU
regulations,
and every car sold through the site will have a European Certificate of
Conformity that
says they are safe to drive on UK roads.
Roeland and Alexander van de Ven have worked quietly for years, lobbying
the European Commission. Eventually they persuaded it to adopt Regulation
1475/95
which gives increased independence to car dealers from manufacturers and
paves the way for the OneSwoop business model.
Financially, OneSwoop is backed by the prominent European capital investment
firm Atlas Venture. However, it is the Marks & Spencer name that
will be most readily recognised by UK consumers.
OneSwoop does not expect to be fully operational until January 2000 and
will initially sell only a limited range of the most popular cars.