We Buy Any Car Brand Guidelines: The McKee Brothers’ 2006 Service and Its TV Jingles

A Greater Manchester car-buying idea.

We Buy Any Car, which writes its name as one lower-case word, webuyanycar, buys cars from the public and sells them on to the motor trade. It was founded in 2006 by the brothers Noel and Darren McKee, the Manchester Evening News reported in January 2017, when it described the business as Greater Manchester-based and headquartered in Middleton; an earlier report in the same paper called it Rochdale-based. The company says it officially turned 20 on 2 March 2026.

The idea was an alternative to selling privately or part-exchanging at a dealer: a free online valuation, then a short appointment at a branch where a buyer inspects the car and makes an offer, which the seller can accept or decline. The company says its 100,000th customer sold a car in 2009, and that in 2010 it extended the same service to van owners through a sister site, webuyanyvan. It entered the American market in 2011, the Manchester Evening News reported; English Wikipedia says the US business later passed to other owners and now operates as an entirely separate company from the British one.

The service drew regulatory attention early on. After reviewing the company’s data for the year to June 2010, the Office of Fair Trading took enforcement action over the way online valuations were presented, and the company signed undertakings to make clear that sellers might not receive the initial online figure and not to set inspectors targets for reducing valuations, the Manchester Evening News reported. The company said at the time that it had already changed its website and was investing in a training academy for its buyers.

From BCA to Constellation.

Ownership changed in 2013, when the UK business was sold to British Car Auctions (BCA), the company says; English Wikipedia gives the same year. BCA itself joined the London stock market in 2015, the company says; English Wikipedia describes a reverse takeover by Haversham Holdings that March, after which the group was called BCA Marketplace. In November 2019 the private-equity firm TDR Capital completed its purchase of BCA Marketplace and took it private, and in October 2020 the group was renamed Constellation Automotive Group, according to English Wikipedia.

That group sits behind several familiar names. City A.M. reported in December 2024 that webuyanycar is owned by the Hampshire-headquartered Constellation Automotive, whose brands also include cinch, Marshall Motor Group and BCA. Constellation launched the online car retailer cinch in July 2019, English Wikipedia says. The webuyanycar website is operated by We Buy Any Car Limited, a company registered in England and Wales.

The parent has a long history of its own. BCA traces its roots to 1946, when it began as Southern Counties Car Auctions in Surrey, English Wikipedia says. The same source says Constellation bought some of the assets of Cazoo after that online retailer collapsed in May 2024, and that the Competition and Markets Authority cleared its purchase of the auction group Aston Barclay in March 2026, with the former Aston Barclay sites rebranded as BCA by July 2026.

The branch network has grown with the brand. The Manchester Evening News counted more than 200 local branches in January 2017, when the company marked its one-millionth vehicle; the company and English Wikipedia both give more than 550 branches in 2026. The company says it now works mainly from pod-style locations at retail parks and similar sites, that it employs more than 1,000 people, and that it served its 4,500,000th customer in September 2025. It marked its five-millionth car purchase on 5 September 2026, the company says.

The process stays deliberately short. The company says a valuation takes about 30 seconds and is held for four days, that the average appointment lasts under 25 minutes, and that it can help settle outstanding finance on a car.

Remarketing and car buying.

Vehicle remarketing firms sell cars that have already had a first life: lease returns, fleet cars, rental cars and, at the salvage end, vehicles written off by insurers. The companies in this group present much of their business through listings, photographs and data. VPauto, the French auction house, says it opened 3D photo studios in 2014 and shows each vehicle with close-up photographs and a defect record marked on a body diagram; IAA said in 2012 that its redesigned bidding tool let buyers view ten photographs of each vehicle at once.

Bidding and valuation tools sit at the centre of these brands. VPauto’s LIVE platform films the sale and takes online bids in real time while a licensed auctioneer runs the room, the company says. In August 2023 RB Global said its IAA business had released a vehicle score built from four corner photographs, a valuation model and a sales decision dashboard for sellers. IAA’s releases give those tools trademarked names, as they would products.

Consumer-facing names are newer. British Car Auctions’ parent launched cinch, an online used-car marketplace for private buyers, in July 2019, and English Wikipedia says cinch has held naming rights to the Scottish Premiership since the 2021–22 season. VPauto has staged themed sales, including an auction of electric vehicles only at Caudan in March 2026, reported by Bevolt.

Corporate pages tell a story of owners and sites. RB Global presents IAA as one of its brands and says IAA joined it in 2023; Constellation Automotive Group, renamed in 2020, owns BCA; and VPauto lists eight sale sites across France. This guide draws on those owner pages, site lists and dated press reports, and marks what rests on a company’s own word.

A brand carried by television.

Television made the name familiar. The Manchester Evening News wrote in 2017 that the company was known for its TV adverts featuring a repetitive jingle of its own name. The company dates its first TV campaign to 2009 and says it featured a breakdancing newsreader. On Christmas Day 2022 it launched a “Just Sold My Car” television and radio campaign set to a reworking of “Friday” by Riton and Nightcrawlers, built around a dancer’s moves, and the company says the jingle quickly became a hit.

The trading name doubles as the web address, and the company writes it as a single lower-case word in its own copy. Its about page sums up the pitch as fast, free valuations, a sale in under an hour and a UK-wide branch network, and credits “memorable advertising” for making the service a household name; those are the company’s words. The same naming pattern runs through the sister site for vans, webuyanyvan, which the company says buys pick-ups, Luton and box vans, motorhomes and caravans. Its typefaces and colour values are not published as a guide.

For a design guide, We Buy Any Car shows how a plain descriptive name, repeated in a jingle, can carry a national service. Compare BCA, the auction group that bought it in 2013, and cinch, a sister brand under Constellation Automotive. For this guide we use a deep blue, a bright sky tone and chalk white with a friendly sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep We Buy Any Car’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.