Guest Motor Group transforms bingo hall into modern truck dealership

A redundant bingo hall in Bushbury, Wolverhampton, has been repurposed and is enjoying a new lease of life as a van and truck sales, service and parts dealership.

Iveco and Fiat Professional dealer Guest Motor Group has invested £4m in the 2.5-acre site, which boasts 22,000sq ft of covered space.

“The premises were built in the mid-1990s for Gala Bingo, closed during the Covid-19 pandemic, and never re-opened,” says Guest managing director, Robert Spittle. “We’ve put four 5-tonne-capacity lifts and two 13m pits into the workshop, one of which has been completed to ATF (authorised testing facility) standard.

“We’ve not been approved as an ATF yet, but we’re in discussions with the DVSA about it.”

The excavations required to put in the pits revealed part of the city’s buried industrial heritage. Back in the days of steam it was a major railway centre, and the construction work uncovered long-forgotten platforms and tracks.

West Bromwich, West Midlands-based Guest already had a presence in Wolverhampton in a far smaller 6,000sq ft building set in an acre on Willenhall Road, 2 miles away. However, it needed a bigger location to cope with rising volumes of business.

The old premises is being retained to handle pre-delivery inspection work and used vehicle sales. Understood to be the largest Iveco dealer group in Europe, Guest now has 14 outlets, primarily in central England. “The furthest north is the Sherwood dealership in Sheffield, while the furthest south is in Cambridge,” Spittle says.

It also operates a parts distribution centre in Hinckley, Leicestershire. The group acts as a conduit for some 4,800 to 5,000 vans and trucks annually, around 400 of which are used.

New vehicles are more readily available than they were a year to 18 months ago. “Stock is coming into the market and we’re talking about deliveries in weeks, not months or years,” he says.

With an uninterrupted 24m roof span thanks to its bingo hall heritage, which means there are no support pillars to restrict vehicle movements, the new site’s workshop employs nine technicians. “We could do with another three though,” Spittle admits.

While Guest has just about enough technicians to satisfy its requirements group-wide, recruiting them remains a constant challenge. In Spittle’s view the only way of addressing it long-term is through apprenticeships, and three apprentices have been taken on at Bushbury. “We recruited 16 companywide in 2023 and we’ve got 40 in total,” he reports.

Trading as Guest Truck and Van, Bushbury will be double-shifting its workshop, but cannot remain open for longer than 17 hours daily. This was a condition imposed when planning consent was granted for the site to be redeveloped to mitigate any risk of night-time disturbance to local householders.

Spittle could be forgiven for feeling that this condition is somewhat unreasonable, given that the houses concerned are on the other side of the main West Coast railway line, which is adjacent to the firm’s new premises.

“Elsewhere, we’ve got four dealerships with workshops on three shifts on weekdays, while the rest are on two shifts,” Spittle says. “We open on Saturdays for a varying range of times, while Sunday opening is dependent on customer demand.”

The new dealership plays host to group company Vehicle Lining Services (VLS). As well as timbering out the load areas of vans, it can fit any kit that trucks need to comply with London’s Direct Vision Standard and the requirements of the Fleet Operator Recognition Scheme.

“We use the waste wood it produces to heat the workshop,” he says.

Plans for the near future include developing a site at the end of the Aston Expressway in Birmingham, which will provide aftersales support for all four of the light commercial brands owned by global automotive behemoth Stellantis. That means Vauxhall, Citroën and Peugeot, as well as Fiat Professional.

How does he see 2024 shaping up?

Spittle believes the demand for vehicles will be relatively strong in the first half, but is likely to slow down in the second thanks to the uncertainty created by an election, combined with lacklustre economic growth and the level of interest rates. The Bank of England is likely to adopt a cautious approach, he suggests, which means rates are unlikely to fall any time soon. “Things should start to improve again in 2025 though,” he predicts.