As thousands of students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland get their GCSE results, a teenager from Cardiff is running a car dealership with a turnover of more than £1 million.
Morgan Wilce, 18, owns Birchwood Motors in the Welsh city, having left school after taking his GCSEs two years ago. “School wasn’t for me,” he told WalesOnline.
The teenager credits his love of the car industry to his late grandfather Lionel Wilce, who in 1967 established a car dealership in the city. Morgan said he named it ‘General Motors’, because “he seemed to think using the name of a popular American manufacturer at the time might generate some attention, and it certainly did.”
Morgan was 14 when he got a job cleaning cars at a local dealership, where he immersed himself in the business to learn the trade. It inspired him to use the proceeds of the sale of a mountain bike to buy his first car, a Volkswagen Polo, from an advert he had seen in a newsagent window. He sold the car just a few days later for a £500 profit.
He told WalesOnline: “The elderly gentleman who bought it was surprised to buy it off a 14-year-old but he remembered my grandfather. It was about just slowly building up from selling the mountain bike and the Polo.
“I did this alongside my studies. I even sold cars during my lunchtimes from the car park opposite school until I did my GCSEs.”
He now employs one member of staff at a business turning over £1m. His website lists around 30 cars for sale, ranging from a £3,995 Ford Fiesta van to a £16,495 Volkswagen Transporter.
“School was just not for me. I think the biggest problem with school is they don’t put effort into people who want alternatives to A-levels like running their own business,“ said Morgan.
His plan is to build the biggest car dealership in Cardiff, and if the customer testimonials are anything to go by, he’s well on the way to realising his dream.
Source: WalesOnline