Review
Like most fleet drivers in the country, we cancelled long journeys by car to see readers, became very adept at imagining what people looked like over the telephone and championed public transport as a solution for some journeys.
And like many fleets, the question of whether alternative fuels might have been a possibility sprang to mind. Despite the chronic lack of petrol and diesel, fleets with LPG vehicles reported few problems.
The Daewoo Leganza range, although strangely lacking a diesel does sport a liquefied petroleum gas bi-fuel version in the same specification as our current test car. Having tested numerous LPG vehicles in the past few years, I would feel confident in saying there is little difference in performance, but economy is likely to be better. Other than that, the driving experience is the same.
Price-wise, the LPG version costs ú17,245, nearly ú2,000 more than the petrol-powered model we are testing, yet is worth ú3,675, or 21% of its value after three years/60,000 miles, less then the cheaper petrol model. Overall costs, according to CAP Motor Research, are 36.35ppm, compared to 32.46ppm for the petrol version and it is all down to the depreciation. The problem is confidence and as David Lee, who runs the John Laing fleet, said in our comment column last week, fleets should look before they leap following the fuel crisis.
As for me, I quickly swapped to a Ford Focus diesel, which can cover 550 miles on a single tank if you have a very light right foot, and managed to avoid the queues for fuel. But if it happens again, I might well be first in the queue for any LPG models on our fleet.
John Maslen
