Superbike Factory customer rescued his prized Ducati just hours before collapse

A Superbike Factory customer who had handed over his Ducati, and was still waiting for payment, says he travelled 100 miles to retrieve it, going on to discover that finance had already been placed on it.

There are plenty of stories emerging from the collapse of Superbike Factory, but Mark's is unusual for one very simple reason: he actually managed to get his bike back.

His Ducati Streetfighter 848 had been valued at £5,200 by We Buy Any Bike, part of the Superbike Factory business and vehicle for getting fresh second-hand stock. Mark had finally decided to sell it after months of changing his mind about whether he really wanted to part with it. He handed the bike over on July 10, having been reassured that payment would follow within a few working days.

By the time he realised something was seriously wrong, however, his Ducati was already sitting in a Superbike Factory showroom and being offered for sale.

What followed involved a 100-mile dash, a confrontation with staff, a scramble to recover the motorcycle and its paperwork, and, after Mark thought the matter was finally over, the discovery that stock finance from DF Capital had been registered against the bike.

The whole episode unfolded just days before Superbike Factory entered the administration process.

“Are you sure you can pay me?”

Mark had been dealing with We Buy Any Bike for several months before deciding to sell his Ducati. He says the £5,200 valuation wasn't unreasonable, and, after deciding that owning three motorcycles was one too many, he eventually agreed to the sale.

The first warning sign came before the bike was collected, when Mark was told that We Buy Any Bike had recently changed banks and could no longer make an immediate payment.

"I distinctly remember having a conversation with their sales guy, Tom, and I said, 'Are you sure you can pay me then? Because, you know, if I relinquish my bike without money in my account, that feels like a risk.' And he replied, 'No, no, it's all fine, nothing to worry about. We've just moved banks, is all.'"

The bike was collected on Friday 10 July. Mark says the motorcycle was inspected by the company's mechanic and, after the inspection, the mechanic contacted a colleague at We Buy Any Bike to confirm that the company wanted to proceed.

"I had to sign one electronic document, just to show that it was picked it up. No documentation was given to me, no terms and conditions, nothing else. And he loaded it in the back of his van."

Mark says he subsequently prompted We Buy Any Bike for written confirmation that the motorcycle had been collected and that payment would be made within the agreed number of working days. He received an email confirming the agreed £5,200 and stating that payment would be made by the close of play on July 16.

July 16 came and went, but the payment didn’t. Mark says he attempted to contact We Buy Any Bike but found himself trapped in a telephone system that appeared to be going nowhere.

"16th July comes around, and I decided that I'm going to ring them up and just remind them that they owe me that money today. On the 16th, their phone system was in a constant loop. I couldn't get hold of anybody."

That prompted him to drive to the Superbike Factory site in Milton Keynes.

"I drove to Superbike Factory in Milton Keynes, which is the local one to me, just to say, 'what's going on? I can't get hold of anyone', only to be told all of their systems were down. But it was nothing to worry about, apparently; it was just an IT glitch."

Mark says he was told the computer systems had apparently been down since Wednesday, July 15. When the promised payment still hadn't appeared by the end of 16 July, Mark decided to take a different approach. He sent notice to We Buy Any Bike stating that he was repudiating the sale and wanted his motorcycle returned. He says he received no response from that correspondence.

The following morning, he got in his car and drove roughly 100 miles to Superbike Factory's Castle Donington site. It was there that he spotted his Ducati sitting on the showroom floor ready to find its new owner.

"It was already on sale. So I started wheeling it out of the showroom. 'Can I help you, sir? What are you doing?' the staff ask me. And I reply, 'This is my bike. I'm taking it.' They come back with, 'You can't possibly do that', but I'm like, 'I can, just watch me. Go and get me my keys and my documents.'"

What followed was, in Mark's words, around 45 minutes of discussions with staff and management. He says the site manager eventually read the email he had sent the previous day and spoke to the sales director, John Loose.

"They saw the contractual logic of what I was saying, which was, 'I've rescinded the contract because you haven't paid me, so therefore you're in breach.'"

Mark says the company eventually handed over the Ducati's keys and documents, including the V5 and service history, allowing him to ride the bike away at around 2.30pm on Friday 17 July.

At around 4 pm on the same day was when Superbike Factory really started to implode, highlighting just how close Mark came to losing his Ducati.

"At 4 pm on the same day, Superbike Factory put a notice up in their window, saying something like 'we have technical difficulties' and that they'd basically stopped trading."

That timing is central to Mark's account, as, had he waited another couple of hours before heading to Donington, he believes the outcome could have been very different.

“I was an hour away from losing possession of the bike!"

Even then, however, Mark's problems were not over. He noticed that the V5 had been altered, with his name crossed out, and subsequently discovered that DVLA had already been notified that the motorcycle had moved into trade ownership.

Then, while he was away on holiday, Mark ran an HPI check on the Ducati, the result of which gave him another shock.

"After all this, I'm away on holiday, and couldn't sleep. For some reason I decided to run a HPI check on my bike. Turned out they'd placed stock finance against it. From DF Capital."

That left Mark in the unusual position of physically possessing his own motorcycle while another party appeared to have a financial interest in it.

"I'm in possession of something that, strictly speaking, the legal ownership of is technically contestable, because DF Capital think they own it. They've taken possession of it. Haven't paid me, no, knowingly not paid me, and then put stock finance against it."

Mark says he then spent several weeks corresponding with the administrators and DF Capital, arguing that the company had not obtained good title to the motorcycle because he had never received the agreed purchase price. He says DF Capital has now agreed to remove the stock finance from the Ducati.

"In the last week, DF Capital has agreed to remove the stock financing. But the amount of effort and legwork has been significant, to say the least.”

"I've been very, very lucky"

For Mark, the fact that he eventually got his motorcycle back is only part of the story. He is acutely aware that other Superbike Factory customers are not in the same position, and that many may now be dealing with the administrators over motorcycles which were handed over to the company but never paid for.

"There are so many people in the community group I'm part of, like me, who haven't been as fortunate as me. Instead, they've parted company with their bikes and their money. And those bikes are still in a Superbike Factory compound."

That, he believes, raises much bigger questions about what the company knew in the final days before the collapse and why motorcycles were still being collected from customers.

Mark has already contacted former directors and the administrators with his concerns. He believes the chronology raises questions about whether the company continued accepting bikes at a time when it knew, or should have known, that it could not pay for them.

"I don't believe for one minute that they [the CEO and directors of SBF] woke up on a Friday morning and just decided to appoint the administrators. It doesn't happen."

He argues that the collection of his Ducati on 10 July is particularly significant, given that it was only days away from entering the administration process.

"When they collected my bike from me, they drove away with it and organisationally, they must have known they weren't going to be paying for it."

Mark is careful to distinguish between what he believes happened and what would ultimately have to be established by an investigation, but he says the circumstances warrant scrutiny of the company's final days of trading.

He points to the fact that an attempt had apparently been made to sell the business before the administrators were appointed, something he believes makes the timing of continued motorcycle collections particularly important.

"The administrators did reveal that prior to their appointment, there'd been an attempt to sell the business, so that lends more weight to this, that they knew they were insolvent. Hence, they were trying to do an enhanced speed sale; that suggests that they knew they were insolvent. And if they knew that, why were they still collecting people's machines?"

That is now one of the key questions hanging over the collapse. Superbike Factory's failure has left customers, suppliers and other creditors trying to establish what happened to their money and, in some cases, their motorcycles. Mark's experience offers a particularly stark illustration of the problem because he was able to recover his Ducati only by physically turning up at a dealership and refusing to leave it behind.

Had he waited until later that afternoon, his £5,200 Ducati could have become another disputed asset caught up in the collapse. Instead, he rode it away. But the fact that he did so does not, in his view, make the episode any less troubling.

"I've got the bike, got the keys, got the documents and DVLA reissuing my V5. But here's the rub. They were still knowingly trading and taking collection of bikes at a point in time when, I would argue, it would have been foreseeable that they were insolvent. I've been very, very lucky."

For the customers who were not, the questions are considerably harder to answer.

Visordown has contacted KR8 to raise the points made in this article and to ask for a response. At the time of publishing, no response has been received. We will update this article if it is forthcoming.

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