News - Page 2167

CUSTOMER confidence and workforce morale is approaching 'rock bottom' at Rover following the announcement that the European Commission is to investigate the Government's £152 million aid package for Longbridge. The EC blow for Rover was compounded by market estimates that the manufacturer's 1999 losses will exceed those of the previous year.

COMPETITION for the Ministry of Defence's colossal £400 million, 10,000-strong white fleet contract has become a two-horse race. The MoD has whittled down the shortlist of five consortia that originally tendered for the business to just Lex Service and Fleetserv, a joint venture between Interleasing, PHH Vehicle Management and Ryder.

FLEET managers should punish drivers who fail to drive more economically, according to the UK's biggest fuel card operator. PHH Vehicle Management believes fleet decision-makers must take action on their fuel expenditure, after pump prices rose by almost 20% - or almost 70p a gallon - in 1999.

THE Vehicle Certification Agency has responded to severe fleet industry criticism of its 'New Car Fuel Consumption and Emissions Figures' guide with major changes to its latest edition. Fleet industry leaders branded the previous booklet 'useless' because it was almost impossible to identify vehicles from their type approval codes.

LEX Service has bought a 50% stake in fleet management software company Tranman Solutions for an undisclosed sum, in a move it hopes will help its tender for a 10-year contract with the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Tranman recently won its largest yet order to provide logistics support to the British Army and Lex is currently on a two-strong shortlist to win a huge 10-year MoD contract for 10,000 non-combat 'white fleet' vehicles.

THE top two men in the world's automotive industry have quashed speculation that UK new car prices are set to tumble. In a special interview at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Ford chairman and chief executive Jac Nasser dismissed lower UK prices as 'highly unlikely' despite the bandwagon of fleet and consumer expectation.

GENERAL Motors has bought the remaining 50% stake it does not own in Saab for an undisclosed sum, heralding a potential doubling of the manufacturer's global sales. The world's largest vehicle manufacturer has had a 50% stake in Saab for 10 years and had until the end of January to decide whether to buy the remaining half owned by Investor, the main investment vehicle for Sweden's Wallenberg family.

VOLKSWAGEN has taken the unprecedented step of publishing two official list prices, one for 1999 model year cars and one for year 2000 cars that feature a host of specification enhancements. The difference in prices between the two ranges is as much as £1,000 on certain models, following price cuts on 20,000 old model year cars still in stock.

JOHN Laing Construction has awarded the contract to manage its 2,500-strong company car fleet to PHH Vehicle Management as part of a major restructuring. Venson will hand over total control of the fleet to PHH by June following a five-way tender process.

AN article on Fleet NewsNet two years ago which revealed that in mainland Europe, Volvo offered a stretched version of the then 960 estate equipped as an ambulance, rang alarm bells with a UK ambulance service. The January 9, 1998 article prompted Ian Wheatley, fleet engineer at Wiltshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust, to contact Volvo urging the company to consider introducing the 960 version, now known as the V90, in the UK.

THE Conservative Party has unveiled a package of measures designed to cut car pollution based on a series of tax incentives. Known as the 'blue-green' tax policy, the party claims its approach is poles apart from the 'heavy regulation, high taxes and state intervention' which the Conservatives say characterise the Government's 'anti-motorist' stance.

THE NHS Transport Managers Association has withdrawn from a joint consultation group with NHS Supplies in a dispute about future supply contracts. The TMA was invited to join the group by NHS Supplies and attended two 'constructive' meetings before reports began to circulate that the two organisations' vehicle supply contracts would be amalgamated and the overall number of suppliers cut.

RENTAL operators stepped into a row with the founder of cut price airline easyJet when he announced plans to launch a new daily rental operation. easyRentacar will launch in April with a single make and model marketed solely through the internet.

ONLINE car buying service Autobytel has launched a European operation called Autobytel.Europe. The new division will be based in Amsterdam, but license, invest in and offer joint services to other Autobytel operations across the continent.

FORD'S Racing Puma, featuring an uprated 154bhp 1.7-litre engine, has gone on sale priced at £22,750 on-the-road.

A TEAM of 21 windscreen repairers from Autoglass is helping repair cars damaged following the gales in France last week.

PRICES of Citroen's new Saxo have been reduced by an average of £200 with the range now starting at under £7,000 on-the-road.

DAEWOO has increased prices on the Matiz range by an average of £200.

MOTABILITY Finance has signed a contract to receive automotive data from Glass's Information Services. The contract has been signed after MFL began discussions with Glass's earlier this year, after it decided to manage the maintenance of its 370,000-strong fleet in-house.

THE right-hand drive Beetle model will cost £14,950 on-the-road, £1,000 less than expected. Due to demand, the firm has also increased the number of right-hand drive cars being imported from 5,000 models to 8,000 for 2000.

VAUXHALL'S Ellesmere Port plant in Cheshire has produced the 250,000th Astra since sales began in March 1998.

CORE fleet models such as the Ford Mondeo and Vauxhall Vectra in the upper medium segment are the only sector of the used car market to report increased used values over last January. Average used car values in all sectors are down on last January's figures with the exception of upper medium models, which have reported a 0.2% increase.

VEHICLE preparation and transport company Eurofleet has expanded its business by opening a new site in Scotland to cater for the growing demand in the north. The 20-acre site, located next to the M8 motorway between Edinburgh and Glasgow, has storage space for up to 3,000 vehicles and includes vehicle inspection facilities, a spray booth production line and dedicated smart (small medium area repair techniques) repair facilities.

THE inexorable increase in fleet sales was the dominant theme of the new car market throughout the 1990s. Fleets bought increasing volumes of cars in real terms throughout the last decade, and also grew their share of the total new car market substantially.

THE advent of the twice-yearly registration plate has succeeded in smoothing out the extreme peaks and troughs of UK new car sales. In August 1998 the new letter prefix saw the month account for about a quarter of the year's new car sales, while July had proved ghost-like on dealer forecourts.

YEAR 2000 could prove the resurrection of fleet diesel sales, reversing their long term decline. The advent of a carbon dioxide-based Vehicle Excise Duty system, and the anticipated Budget unveiling of the CO2-driven benefit-in-kind tax regime, could provide the ideal fillip for diesel after a disappointing 1999 saw its fleet sales end 11.4% down on 1998's figure, itself 3% down on 1997.

THE UK's light commercial vehicle sector, so often seen as a barometer of the national economy, failed to reflect booming UK business in 1999. Total van sales were 2.3% down on 1998 at 231,761 units (1998: 237,323), although the full year total was still the third best of the decade, and well above any year between 1991 and 1997.

THE extended shut-down of British business for the millennium celebrations saw the December fleet market finish 12.5% below 1998 levels. Fleets bought a total of 45,277 (1998: 51,726) cars in the last month of 1999, in a market down 11.9% to 84,582 units (96,346).

THE Ford Focus entered the fleet arena with a vengeance in 1999, racing to the top spot in the fleet best sellers' chart. The lower medium contender sold 66,726 units into fleet, ahead of last year's leader, the Ford Mondeo, which saw its fleet sales tumble 17.5% to 63,616 registrations.

ONLY three of the top 10 fleet manufacturers increased their fleet sales last year, failing to offset dramatic losses among certain players. Vauxhall was the most striking success story, boosting its fleet sales by 7% to 182,379 registrations, largely on the strength of Astra, which achieved a 13.8% increase in sales to 59,222 units, and Corsa which grew its fleet sales by 35.7% to 40,595 units.