What's happened to PH?

[XJR500bhp]

Half the amount of cars for sale, such a shame. Ph was great 6 months ago, the classifieds are crap now in comparison. I understand you have a business to run, but didn't the free classifieds help drive traffic to the site?

[Codswallop]

I think it may be due to ongoing problems with the change-over to the new classifieds. Lots of ads appear to have disappeared with the back and forth switching between new and old formats.

[Sam_68]

It's also off-season for performance car sales, of course (particularly sports cars).

Adverts for PistonHeads staples like Elises, TVR's, Caterhams and even MX5's and Boxters always drop off dramatically at this time of year.

[wolf1]

Because it's no longer free unless you've been registered for a while.

[Garlick]

Definitely a quiet time of year for us, but we currently have 99,325 cars on the site which isn't too far off where we normally are in Jan. Might be down a touch, but certainly not fallen off a cliff and is in line with expectations taking into account the state of the market and the time of year.

I suspect the free ads will have an impact to some degree, but we do monitor it and so far we haven't seen a dramatic drop off. We manage to maintain this because of the free option to long-term members and the fact that we are still cheaper than other classified sites.