A BLACKBURN prestige car dealership is gaining a growing reputation for supplying cars to the stars.

Hippo Vehicle Solutions, on Trident Park, has sold to footballers and actors down the years and now it is attracting soap stars and celebrities from reality television.

Blackburn Rovers stars Jay Spearing, Paul Taylor and David Raya were all photographed at the showroom last month and last November Markus Olsson, Lee Williamson and Josh King were also snapped looking for a deal at the club's commercial sponsor.

And it dealt the slick set of wheels driven by Ryan Hawley when he became the 'new' Robert Sugden on ITV soap Emmerdale in October last year.

Marketing manager Antony Anderson said: "We’ve also stocked cars which have exceeded £200,000 and we’ve bought cars from footballers at Southampton and Everton as well as reality stars from Geordie Shore.

"We also had the white Audi R8 from Emmerdale in as stock a few months ago before we sold it - Robert Sugden drove this for a while."

Hawley certainly enjoyed the car, saying: "I wasn't really interested in cars before. I got on set and they said they were given me a nice car. They took me to the car and I felt like Batman."

However, Mr Anderson is keen to stress the showroom has motors for most budgets.

He added: "We’ve sold to plenty over the years but I'm not exactly sure we can disclose who has bought what.

"We prefer to keep everyone open to our products rather than suggesting we just sell to famous and rich people!"

One of the latest supercars up for sale is a second-hand car that has had two careful owners and only has 1,800 miles on the clock - at a pricetag of £182,980.

The Porsche 911 GT3 PDK Clubsport coupe is complete with ceramic composite brakes, Alcantara seats and a top speed of 196mph.

It only does 14.9miles per gallen in urban driving but, it can accelerate from 0 to 62mph in just 3.5 seconds.

And new stock is taking the business just about as far as it gets from its origins in 1906.

The firm began as a coal merchants but the Preston family then chose to take the company in a different direction and entered the motor trade.