THE battle to win fleet business will be fought through an alliance with Ford's fleet department, Land Rover has revealed. Matthew Taylor, sales and marketing director, said a new fleet sales department would be set up and work closely with Ford fleet operations director Mike Wear.

Mike Wright, managing director of Land Rover, will be in charge of the work of the dedicated fleet sales team. The setting up of the new team follows the departure of corporate sales director Vince Floyd, who left the company to join dealer group Sytner (FNN June 23).

Taylor said he was also planning to meet UK dealers to talk to them about the future shape of Land Rover and how they would play a part in building fleet sales.

He said: 'Ford can help us because when it is supplying a customer with cars which also runs, for example, Honda CRVs, they can inform us and we can bid for the business. A lot of management cars are Discoveries through sales to user-choosers, so there are a lot of fleet customers out there. We can build the Defender brand through a sports utility version as well.'

'We have to make sure that residual values remain strong, because they are always important to everyone in the fleet industry. We need to find more fleets and more user-choosers to put us on their choice lists.'