The V40 has helped Volvo achieve a 67% share of sales to companies between January and May this year.

Selwyn Cooper, national corporate operations manager at Volvo, claims this is the highest content into business sales of any premium brand.

“We measure ourselves against the other premium brands because that’s our aspiration,” he said.

Volvo’s internal figures, based on ‘true fleet’ sales rather than SMMT figures, show that 34% of V40 sales have been to “true end users”.

Adding in other corporate sales channels such as rental and Motability, brings the figure closer to 70%.

James Shires, national corporate sales operations manager, said: “The V40 is really hitting a sweet spot in the market place because of our safety credentials - it has the highest ever rating for a passenger car - coupled with design and low CO2 emissions, resulting in very competitive Benefit-in-Kind taxation.”

Volvo has reduced CO2 emissions from 94g/km to 88g/km on the 2014 model year V40.

The rest of Volvo’s line-up (except for the XC90) has also undergone changes (read more here).

“We’ve got the freshest line-up we’ve ever had in our showrooms,” said Cooper.

Offering in all segments

The V40 has allowed Volvo to approach more companies as it now has an offering in all of the segments.

“That’s made a big difference in terms of the people we’re able to talk to and the way that we’re able to get onto lists,” Cooper added.

Leasing companies also have an important part to play.

“We’ve weighted our demo fleet to enable leasing companies to drive the V40 and that’s gaining traction for us,” said Cooper.

Peter Johnson, total cost of ownership manager at Volvo, is working with Volvo Car Corporation in Sweden to make sure the right elements are included in products to support low total cost of ownership. 

Sales of the S60, V60 and V70 business editions (which launched last year) are also up.

“We changed the margin structure and support structure of the car to give a very attractive advertised price,” said Cooper. “We’ve upped the spec with some business specific items such as sat-nav and reversing sensors.”

Picture caption: Volvo V40 at Company Car in Action last week.

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