When Michael Bell took the chief executive’s chair of the family business, Available Car, in 2019, he could never have anticipated quite the baptism of fire that was coming.

Well past the 2016 peak of new car sales, his first year at the helm tackled used car stock challenges and continued work on Available Car’s digital infrastructure and IT investment.

And then 2020 became the year of coronavirus lockdowns and the biggest challenges for business leaders since the 2008 global economic collapse.

“It’s probably the most challenging 18 months we’ve ever had,” says Bell. “As a family we’ve been doing this for so long, but being thrust into the limelight, it was an interesting period.

“I remember being sat with my old man in the boardroom and he was saying ’well, if we can get through this, we can get through anything’.”