Brands over time

Arnold Clark
over time

Every year keeps its colour across every chart.│ ChatGPT, 30 Nov 2022

141 of Arnold Clark's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2015 to 2025, measured sentence by sentence, 28 of them recovered from the Internet Archive. How the writing has moved over the years, how it compares with 6 other motoring brands, and what it sounds like in its own words.

Pages measured
141
Years covered
2015–25
Archived before ChatGPT
28
Blog · press
7 · 134

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

Arnold Clark's homepage from 2002 to 2026, closest to 1 July, from the Internet Archive. Pick a year or press play. Each headline is quoted from its capture and links to the archived copy.

2026arnoldclark.com29 Jun 2026
Arnold Clark homepage, 29 Jun 2026

Screenshot of Arnold Clark’s homepage (arnoldclark.com) as archived by the Internet Archive on 29 Jun 2026. © Arnold Clark or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by Arnold Clark.

Homepage

2026

“Two years' free servicingwhen you buy a used car”

Page title

Arnold Clark | New & Used Cars For Sale

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2010Servicing & Repairs
  2. 2015Hi there, let us help you find your next car...
  3. 2018Let’s find your next car Search 25,907 used cars at the UK’s number 1 dealer website
  4. 2020Reserve online with just a £99 depositContactless Click & Collect and home delivery now available.
  5. 2023We guarantee the best used car deals in the UK!
  6. 2026Two years' free servicingwhen you buy a used car

21 captures. Screenshots are rendered from the archive and can pull in images archived later than the page itself; dates come from the capture. Years without a capture are greyed out in the strip.

02 · Measures by year

How the writing moved

Every year’s pages, averaged. Pick a measure. Hatched bars rest on fewer than 10 pages: context, not a finding. The page count sits under each year.

Sentence lengthAverage words per sentence.
6
12
18
Motoring avg 14.3
11.0
12.7
12.9
13.2
13.7
15.9
14.0
14.2
14.2
14.2
13.7
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
20153 pp
20164 pp
20179 pp
201811 pp
20196 pp
202012 pp
202117 pp
202232 pp
202316 pp
20241 pp
20251 pp
2026no pages
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
201511.03
201612.74
201712.99
201813.211
201913.76
202015.912
202114.017
202214.232
202314.216
202414.21
202513.71

Years with pages: 2015 (3), 2016 (4), 2017 (9), 2018 (11), 2019 (6), 2020 (12), 2021 (17), 2022 (32), 2023 (16), 2024 (1), 2025 (1). Dates come from page metadata, structured data, the URL, or the month a page was first archived (a latest possible date).

03 · Against its sector

Arnold Clark among motoring brands

Each dot is one brand’s mean across all its measured pages; the tick is the sector average. Only brands with 10 or more measured pages are shown or counted. Select a dot to open that brand.

  1. Questions

    26% less than its sector

    3.4 against a sector average of 4.6; 3rd lowest of 7.

  2. "You"

    9% less than its sector

    58% against a sector average of 64%; 2nd lowest of 7.

  3. Em dashes

    6% less than its sector

    3.27 against a sector average of 3.48; 3rd lowest of 7.

Sentence length3rd lowest of 7
Arnold Clark 13.6
12.916.6
Contractions3rd highest of 7
Arnold Clark 16.9
11.922.6
"You"2nd lowest of 7
Arnold Clark 58%
56%73%
"We"3rd lowest of 7
Arnold Clark 28%
22%34%
Questions3rd lowest of 7
Arnold Clark 3.4
2.98.0
Long words3rd lowest of 7
Arnold Clark 22%
18%26%
Em dashes3rd lowest of 7
Arnold Clark 3.27
1.745.19
AI-associated words3rd highest of 7
Arnold Clark 0.81
0.381.81
ExclamationsMid-table, 4th of 7
Arnold Clark 0.89
0.211.61
Page length2nd lowest of 7
Arnold Clark 1,009
7535,102

Pages measured: Halfords 22 · Kwik Fit 170 · RAC 193 · cinch 311 · Arnold Clark 141 · carwow 320 · Motorway 194. Measures and method: SGR-010; this sector and its brands were added by Brands over time, measured exactly as the studies measured theirs. Sector averages and ranks cover every brand in the sector on this site.

04 · Vocabulary

Words Arnold Clark uses more than its peers

The words this brand reaches for more often than the rest of its sector. This is subject matter more than voice.

trim27.6 vs 3.4
mpg27.3 vs 3.8
rating17.7 vs 1.4
sport23.2 vs 3.3
review34.6 vs 9.0
litres18.0 vs 3.5
trims9.5 vs 0.8
alloys8.0 vs 0.4
seats28.4 vs 8.4
Arnold ClarkSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 141 pages. Checked for product names and page furniture.

05 · In its own words

What it sounded like

Openings of real pages, quoted word for word, oldest first. Each links to the page, or to the Internet Archive’s copy when it has gone.

201425 Feb · PressArchived copy
“Our resident tall person, Alastair, says the most important factor is legroom. Most people’s legs are just under half their height: if you’re more than 6 foot tall, you’ll need space for 36-inch legs – at least.”
The best cars for tall drivers
202215 Feb · Press
“Oddly enough, the name means ‘wheat’ in Spanish. Hardly inspiring. But, trust us, our definition is much better. The Formentor is no ‘skip-along in a field on a summer’s day’ kind of car. Instead, this is the sort of vehicle that’d take an angle-grinder to a wheatfield and then munch it all down for lunch.”
CUPRA Formentor e-Hybrid review

06 · Every page

All 141 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 141 count towards the measures. Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

20251 page
20241 page
202316 pages
202232 pages
202117 pages
202012 pages
20196 pages
201811 pages
20179 pages
20164 pages
20153 pages
In the overall numbers, no year29 pages

07 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

Arnold Clark's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, fetched from the live site in 2026 and from the Internet Archive for 2015 to November 2022. Homepages are shown as captures; product and help pages are not measured.

The measures

Code counts from ScriptGrain’s writing instruments: sentence length and rhythm, contractions, pronouns, punctuation, long words, and three published lists of AI-associated words. No AI model reads or judges any page.

What it cannot say

These measures describe style. They cannot tell who or what wrote a page, and nothing here says or implies that any brand used AI to write.

Sample sizes

Every number carries its page count. Years under 10 pages, and before-and-after comparisons with under 10 pages on a side, are shown as context only.

Sentence length
Average words per sentence.
Sentence rhythm
How much sentence length varies (standard deviation over mean). Higher reads less even.
Contractions
Contractions (we're, you'll, it's) per 1,000 words. A rough gauge of how conversational the writing is.
"You"
Share of I/we/you pronouns that are "you": how much the writing addresses the reader.
"We"
Share of I/we/you pronouns that are "we": how much the writing talks about the organisation.
Questions
Question marks per 1,000 words.
Exclamations
Exclamation marks per 1,000 words.
Long words
Share of words with seven or more letters.
Em dashes
Em dashes per 1,000 words.
AI-associated words
Words from SGR-007's three AI-associated lists, per 1,000 words. These are style markers that people used long before ChatGPT; a higher rate says nothing about who or what wrote the page.
AI-era marketing words
Marketing words that became more common in AI-era copy (seamless, elevate, unlock...), per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
Quieter LLM-favoured words
Everyday words language models are known to over-use, per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
AI-associated sentence shapes
Sentence patterns such as "not just X, but Y", found by ScriptGrain's cliche checker, per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
Page length
Average words per page.

Studies: SGR-009: Do brands in the same sector sound the same? · SGR-010: How UK brands write · SGR-011: Did brand writing change after ChatGPT?.