A much- oved family business that has served the community for over 100 years is set to close its doors.
From its base on Queens Road in Southport Oldfield Automobiles can trace its roots back to 1893 and is set to cease trading at the end of October. One of the four family members and owners, Steven Oldfield said the business is to close due to people retiring, but said soaring prices and cost of living would be serious concerns if the business were to continue.
The historic company is now selling off all its stock and Steven who has run the business for the last forty years said he is "ready to enjoy a bit of downtime".
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Speaking to Lancs Live he said: "We buy cars from the likes of Cazoo and all that sort of thing - they just buy everything, because they have to fill their car supermarkets…so they will just give whatever they need to give.
“The reconditioning costs are a lot more than they used to be and it’s getting harder to repair cars as they’re moving to electric. Cars have gone up an awful lot - the sort of cars that we buy and sell have gone up by a third. Parts have gone up and it’s harder to get the parts, the supplies have not really recovered from covid."
Energy prices he says, while they will not affect the business ‘would have been a consideration this winter.’ He adds: “To have your heating on full blast for three or four months, the costs would have been horrendous.
“It’s more the fact that we’ve all been doing it for nearly 40 years, and we're just ready to enjoy a bit of downtime and have a bit of a rest. We’ve looked after Southport’s transport needs for over 100 years, and there are no more generations to come through. We will be sad, but we always knew that we would be the last generation. We’ve all got children but they’re all doing different things with their lives.
“It will be a sad day, but we’ll be going knowing that we’ve done our best and looked after everybody and we’ve sold cars to three generations of people and some people have had four or five generations of family buying cars off us.”
In a statement, David, Steven, Peter, and Stephanie, of Oldfields Automobiles Ltd, said: "After over 100 years of trading and many years of service to the people of Southport and surrounding areas, we, as a family have finally decided to retire and as such from 31/10/2022 Oldfields Automobiles will no longer be trading."
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