CAP manufacturer relationships manager Martin Ward scours the globe for the week's insider fleet intelligence

Wednesday

To Berlin to the Mazda3 i-Stop fleet drive. As I’ve said before, most recently at the Fleet News Green Summit in London (Fleet News, July 2), there are some really good stop/start systems around, some average and some not so good.

The Mazda i-Stop system falls into the very good category as it offers a very quick start-up time (Mazda claims 0.35 seconds, making it the fastest device on the market).

The system is currently offered only on the 2.0-litre petrol engine, which produces 150bhp and emits 159g/km of CO2.

However, there’s no doubt that Mazda will, at some stage, apply the system to a smaller petrol engine and a diesel, helping it reduce CO2 emissions even further.

The real test was driving it, and it all worked perfectly.

Mazda has started bringing out the big guns at these fleet events, and in attendance in Germany were Jeff Guyton –
president of Mazda Motors Europe, James Hopkins – fleet director, and Nicola Murphy – fleet operations manager. Surely a sign of how important Mazda sees the fleet sector.

Friday

Back to Germany, this time to Wolfsburg, the home of Volkswagen, for the European fleet launch of the Polo, along with more than 400 guests from 22 countries.

Pedro Martinez Diaz, the new head of Volkswagen European Fleet Sales, told us that total fleet sales in Europe were down 33% in the period from January to April this year compared to the same period in 2008, but Volkswagen sales fared better with a 24% reduction.

Diaz said that the current Polo was not achieving market share, but he hoped the new car would appeal to a much larger audience.

Vince Kinner, head of fleet in the UK, told me that you can guarantee that when Volkswagen launches a replacement car, it is always far superior to the outgoing model.

But the new Polo surpasses anything Volkswagen has ever done before.

This is this is the first time a manufacturer has brought such outstanding quality to the small car sector.

Feedback from customers has given me great confidence that Volkswagen will now be the benchmark for this sector of the market – the new Polo is the right car at the right time.

The new Polo is due in UK showrooms from October with prices expected to start at around £9,500.