POOR PERFORMANCES on the pitch by England even seemed to infect used car buyers with the summertime blues, car information experts CAP have revealed.

CAP crunched the numbers on consumer visits to its car valuation and motoring costs website during England’s short-lived campaign.

They wanted to see if England’s endeavours had any more impact on people’s plans to spend money than they did on Italy, Uruguay or Costa Rica’s chances of going through.

The results surprised even CAP’s analysts, when car valuation requests at cap.co.uk slumped by almost 60% during England’s 2-1 defeat by Uruguay – and didn’t recover for over 24 hours.

In contrast, the goalless – and some might say pointless – match with Costa Rica had no discernible impact at all on searches for used car prices.

CAP’s Mike Hind explains: “We did the analysis partly for a bit of fun but also because used car dealers often complain that big international sporting events tend to bring a reduction in trade.

“A poor showing in international sport has also been shown historically to put a dent in the losing country’s stock market in the immediate aftermath.  We wondered whether there was going to be any clear impact in our own part of the economy.

“Of course there were a lot more people glued to the first and second matches than looking at car values on the internet but the real surprise came on the morning after England v Uruguay. Fewer than half as many people as normal seemed to have any appetite for looking up car prices and motoring cost details.

“We had to smile when we saw no change at all in website activity during or after the Costa Rica game.  It was clear by then that normal life had resumed.

“What surprised us most of all was that we saw exactly the same reduction from Scottish users of our site. We expected to see business as usual among the Scots – maybe even a small rise – when England’s World Cup hopes were dashed.  But even motorists north of the border didn’t return in their usual numbers until the Monday morning.”

The full story on CAP’s World Cup car market blues investigation can be seen on the blog at cap.co.uk

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