If the coronavirus has hit the new car market hard, the second-hand sector is doing very well.

So much so that the reconditioning of vehicles is industrialized.

This is particularly the case in Ingrandes-sur-Vienne where the Emil Frey group has set up a center since this summer.

Reportage. 

REPORTAGE

It is a sector which does not know the crisis.

Despite the economic shock that hit the country in the wake of the coronavirus, the used car market is flourishing.

So much so that the reconditioning of used vehicles is becoming industrialized.

Real factories overhaul used cars for resale.

This is particularly the case in Ingrandes-sur-Vienne, near Châtellerault, in Vienne, in a reconditioning center of the Emil Frey group, installed since this summer.

30,000 vehicles will pass through this center each year, Europe 1 went there.

From the engine to the bumper, everything is controlled

"Here she is, she is ready for her second life. A little blow of self-drying on it and she goes to the next step, in the expertises", explains at the microphone of Europe 1 a worker in front of a car which is about to cross many steps before reviewing the bitumen.

Because after a first blow of karcher, the technical experts of this reconditioning center go absolutely everything checked: from the mechanics to the slightest bump on the bumper.

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10 days to give a new life to a vehicle

Bodybuilders, welders, painters, here each one has a very specific task to perform to restore a beauty to thousands of vehicles.

All in record time: "10 days between the time the vehicle leaves the dealership and the time it returns to the dealership to be exhibited," said Vincent Gorce, Managing Director of the Emil Frey France group.

That is three times less time than in a traditional workshop.

"Dedicating an entity to the reconditioning of used vehicles allows us to industrialize the work processes, and we were thus able to recruit less specialized profiles and generate around a hundred jobs on this Ingrandes site."

And the market is so buoyant that the group hopes to set up four to five new second-hand vehicle reconditioning centers throughout France within a few months.