Web Site Review: Exchange & Mart

URL: exchangeandmart.co.uk

Exchange and Mart sell a lot of other stuff besides cars, but they have a fairly substantial number (~90,000) of used cars for sale. 39 Peugeot 406 Coupés were listed.

The basic search facility for the page allows you to do a free-text search, which is useful as it allows you to add only those terms which are important, i.e. "Peugeot 406 coupe 2.0 blue leather". You can also narrow searches by clicking on the various options for manufacturer and model, and to further filter the results according to price or location.

The advanced search is more powerful, allowing you specify a range of options including the price, the age of adverts, fuel type and transmission. Unusually, more than one combination of model and manufacturer can be included in a single search, and min/max mileages and prices can be entered as free text rather than selected from a pre-set list.

Two cars caught my eye, both 2.0 SE's from 2000. One in silver, for sale privately, 80,000 miles for £3,500; the other red with 73,000 for £3899. Both come at the top of the ranking system I've created to help me make a decision - more of this anon.

Overall, the Exchange & Mart site is pretty good, but it is let down slightly by the number of vehicles available. For more common cars, they've probably got enough [A search for a Ford Focus within 20 miles of my home found 72 cars] but for a rarer beast like the 406 Coupé a larger supplier base is required. For comparison, Autotrader claims 365,000 cars on-line, of which 188 are 406 Coupés.