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SKODA Australia is about to fill a gap in its national dealer network, with a new site set to open early in the new year in the Bayside suburb of Cheltenham.

Bayside Skoda will open in January. It is owned by Bayside European, which already operates a Peugeot and Citroen dealership just up the road at 1285 Nepean Highway, Cheltenham, as well as a Volkswagen dealership in Frankston.

It brings Skoda’s Melbourne sites to five – the others being in Essendon, Seaford, Richmond and Nunawading – and it brings Skoda’s national number to 33 sales and services centres.

Bayside Skoda will be a standalone retail and parts sales outlet with a service workshop.

Skoda Australia director Michael Irmer said the brand was looking to ensure that all sites offer both sales and service facilities.

“This is what we want in the future – where everything is under one roof,” he told journalists at a media event in Sydney this month. “One team, one dream, everyone works at front and back and it gives a really good customer service.

“We only have a few dealerships like this at the moment but we would like to have more. (It requires) a certain size to achieve that. So five in Melbourne, that is quite good as well.”

Mr Irmer said there were some service-only centres in regional or remote areas (there are 16 nationally), such as Darwin or Alice Springs.

“We have been using the power of the (Volkswagen) group. We have service centre that uses Volkswagen and in some cases Audi dealers as service locations in areas where we are not quite ready to have a dealer with all the service.”

Meanwhile, the Volkswagen Group-owned Czech brand is winding up the rollout of its new global corporate identity, which kicked off back in 2016.

Mr Irmer said there were only two dealerships remaining that had not updated their CI – in Adelaide and on the New South Wales Central Coast.  In both cases the delay was due to hold-ups with local council approvals.

Skoda recently announced that it intends to double its sales in Australia in the next five years, meaning it will grow from the expected circa-6000 units it will achieve by the end of this year, to 12,000 -13,000 units by 2023.

By Tim Nicholson

Eastside Skoda in Nunawading shows its latest CI which will also be adopted by Skoda’s next dealership, Bayside Skoda in Cheltenham

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