County approached by luxury car dealers (9)
I believe the answer is:
merchants
'luxury car dealers' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both people as well as being plural nouns.
Perhaps there's an association between them I don't understand?
'county approached by' is the wordplay.
'county' becomes 'hants' (short for Hampshire).
'approached' becomes 'merc' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'by' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'hants' put after 'merc' is 'MERCHANTS'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for merchants that I've seen before include "Retail traders" , "Business people engaged in trade" , "Traders in large quantities" , "They buy and sell" .)