About Us | Central GB Ltd

Central GB Ltd provides a full range of dealer services from our brand new 2-tiered Showroom situated in the heart of Nottingham, just by the racecourse. We work with a number of vehicle brands including the Morgan Motor Company, GBS (Great British Sports Car), and Lotus Cars for vehicle and sales and aftersales. We also specialise in the sale of performance and prestige vehicles, with likes of Audi, Aston Martin, Alfa Romeo, BMW, Bentley, Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and many more!

2014

Central GB Limited was founded by Andy Bradbury one of the owners of the market leading Paint protection ‘GEN-3 Ceramic’ (www.gen-3.co.uk)

Back in 2014 Lotus fully tested and manufacture approved his GEN-3 ceramic product and they officially launched it under the ‘Lotus Ceramic’ brand.

Upon finishing the meeting, Andy was invited to go on a tour around the factory and see the facilities at the famous Hethel site. The further he got into the factory tour he gained a real appreciation of what went into building these special British hand-built sports cars. This new founded appreciation continued to grow as he started to talk to some of the members of staff who had stuck by the brand through all of the highs and (more importantly) the lows Lotus had faced over its 77 year history. Their passion and enthusiasm for the brand was remarkable and something really quite special, something you see less and less of in the car industry today, with mass production and exporting production facilities overseas for foreign labour.

Whilst going around the factory he saw the Evora (the Evora S Sports Racer this was the model at the time). He was astounded that despite being a petrol head for many years he had never seen the Evora in the flesh. He was impressed by the looks and the usability of the car, having many creature comforts that you would never expect in a Lotus.

Following on from his factory tour he then met with Clive Chapman at the older part of the factory, where Clive shared a lot of history and talked to Andy in great detail about his father Colin Chapman the founder of Lotus.

Andy was in his element here, he was also invited to drive a Lotus around their famous Hethel racetrack, developed by Mr Colin Chapman himself for vehicle testing (testing in the proper way!). He of course accepted the invitation and the more and more laps he did in the Evora Sport Racer the more the smile grew on his face, he was simply blown away! When comparing it to his Audi RS5 V8 cabriolet, which he was using a daily driver at the time, this felt like a heavy lump compared to the nimble and precise Lotus Evora.

Finishing off the day, they visited the motorsport division, where a Daytona Blue Evora S Sports Racer was sitting. With his favourite colour being blue he said “ If I was to have a Lotus that would be the one” that comment was really the start of our Lotus journey, as he received a tap on the shoulder from Scott Walker (Lotus UK sales manager) to say that that car was for sale one of only 2 cars that colour and spec (IPS) Andy didn’t hesitate and agreed a deal to buy the car.

2015

Six months go by with a no Vehicle faults, having driven all over the UK and across Europe, he spoke to Lotus to ask where he could take his car to be serviced. Living in Derbyshire, the most local would have been Leeds or Manchester, so at least a 3-4 hour round trip.

He asked Lotus if he could send a couple of race technicians from his lifelong friend (and soon to be Lotus dealer business partner) Kevin Riley, who owns The National Motorsport Academy (NMA) www.motorsport.nda.ac.uk. His race workshop facilities were based in Nottingham, making it significantly easier for him to get his car serviced.

Kevin is from the Colin chapman Era where Lotus was winning everything in F1 and Kevin was huge fan of the brand having owned a Elan in the mid 70’s. and did indeed meet Colin several times. Kevin has a remarkable passion for Motorsport having raced and winning many races in a Lotus in the GT Cup series, so the Lotus brand was very close to his heart. Kevin owns the very famous Lotus Le Mans Evora GTE and is on display in our ground floor showroom.
As the 2 race technicians returned from Hethel now being classed as Lotus approved tech’s, we were official Lotus Service and Repair Centre in Nottingham, Lotus then invited both Andy and Kevin over to the factory for a World conference, the first Lotus had had in many years!

This followed on to Lotus asking if they wanted to take on the franchise for Nottingham. Both Andy and Kevin were busy with their other successful businesses but were both excited at the thought of working with Lotus to help promote the brand. They both didn’t want to promote the Lotus brand in the traditional Dealer format, indeed they never referred the centre as a dealer, as it is “Centre of excellence” and is somewhere people could visit and take in the history of the Brand, much in the same way Andy experienced Lotus at the Hethel factory.

The large property in Nottingham on waterside way that Kevin owns already housed Tyre And alloy wheel supply, a full race car workshop, Carbon fibre parts manufacturing and an OEM approved Body repair centre, so this was the perfect place to incorporate the Lotus showroom and Workshop.

2016

This idea then started to become a reality with brand new showroom and workshop facilities opening and sales started coming through.

This is what they created:

2018

Fast forward to 2018, The Lotus sales were going strong being within the top 5 dealers in the UK and top 10 Europe.

Then came the exciting news that Lotus had a new owner called Geely and they had big plans to completely restart and rebuild Lotus from the ground up! They had big plans for brand with large investment into the Hethel facility and develop a new range of models. All exciting news!

With the news of new investment, we took the decision to expand our facility and build an all-new showroom for the new Model range that would be coming in the future.

2021

With delays due to covid pushing back the opening of the new showroom, we had our grand opening on the April Bank holiday, with lots of customers excited to get out with covid restrictions loosening off.

2021 also brought the year of the Lotus Final edition models, with us being inundated with people queuing up to get one before they all sold out. This was very much a bittersweet waving goodbye to the models we know so very well and had grown to love and adore. We finished the year being 2nd in the UK for vehicle sales, quite a proud moment for us being the youngest dealer in the UK. New and exciting model were on their way though, so this an exciting new adventure for us.

2022

Facing some serious delays from Lotus with the new Lotus Emira, and Lotus not being able to provide us with any new cars for the majority of 2022, we took the decision to get into performance and prestige vehicles to sit alongside our Lotus Products.

This has worked well for us, and we have built up a large customer base, so we were able to supply these customers replacements for all of their cars in their collections. Whether it is a supercar, or their replacement of their daily drivers.

2023

Expanding further we took the decision to partner with Morgan Motor Company and took on the franchise for the Nottingham area for the brand. Morgan sat alongside our Lotus business as this fitted in with our core morals as a business making a hand build British Sports car and having a strong focus on customer experience. www.morgan-motor.com

This business was setup to sit alongside our Lotus and performance and prestige product as another arm to the business. Tying in with the CENTRAL branding, this brand is www.centralmorgan.com

We are continuing to grow the Morgan business today, to expand the awareness of these remarkable cars to a new audience.

2024

This year marks a big change for our company with us taking the decision to conclude our new car contract with Lotus Cars. This came about due to substantial change Lotus made to their market position. Going from a small but very special manufacture based on the outskirts Norwich making truly amazing British hand build sports cars where the core values of the great Colin Chapman still applied “To add speed, add lightness”. Lotus now moving on to 2.5tonne plus electric SUV’s and saloons coming out of Wuhan, China, this isn’t what Lotus meant to us a company, so we took the decision to step aside and focus on what is now called the legacy Models (Elise, Exige, Evora) in the form of the preowned market. We are still a Lotus Authorised Repairer and continue to work on all models made in the UK, including the Emira, for general servicing, warranty work and repairs. We feel with us focussing on these models we can connive to give our customers the very best service our Centre offers.

We have also taken on GBS (Great British Sports Car) in a New car sales and aftersales capacity, to strengthen their UK platform also. www.greatbritishsportscars.com

2024 has also brought us the second tier to our showroom, with the Lotus, Morgan and GBS going upstairs and downstairs now exclusively for our Performance and Prestige products.

So, lots of changes and growth to the business and we look forward to all our customers joining us on this journey.

Sticking to our core values Providing a “Centre of Excellence” – “A place for all car enthusiast to visit and enjoy”