News - Page 2225

MITSUBISHI'S Carisma has been Fleet Car of the Year 1999 by the Institute of Transport Managers.

THE Vauxhall Vectra narrowly beat the Ford Mondeo to the accolade of the UK's favourite fleet car on the 98,000-strong Lex Vehicle Leasing fleet.

NATIONAL Tyres and Autocare has been appointed by Newport Pagnell-based CLM Fleet Management as a preferred supplier to its 14,000-strong fleet.

DEALERSHIP and contract hire company D C Cook has issued a warning that pre-tax profits would fall below those reported last year because of weak demand for new cars.

LEASE Plan raised £6,224 for Comic Relief following a fund-raising day which saw its 300-plus staff take part in a variety of money-spinning events including shoe shining, parachute jump, photo competitions, auction, car washing and a red nose party.

THE motor industry's highest accolade - the Castrol IMI Gold Medal - has been presented to Jaguar Cars and Nick Scheele, its chairman and chief executive.

DENTMASTER has reported a 25% rise in pre-tax profits from £173,100 to £217,400 for the six months to December 31 on turnover doubling to £5.1 million from £2.5 million.

FLEETS have been given a nightmare vision of the future in a new study into road user charging in London. Motorists, including fleet drivers, will have to fork out millions of pounds in extra taxes for any scheme to work, with no exceptions for essential user fleets, delivery vehicles or lorries.

CAR parts and servicing group Kwik-Fit Holdings is planning an organic expansion of its business following the past year's acquisitions, which helped profits and turnover soar to record levels. However, much of the profits boost came from a one-off property sale worth £8.9 million which dramatically shifted the company's fortunes - it would otherwise have increased profits £300,000.

KWIK-Fit Holdings has invested £1.8 million is consulting and training services company TFA Holdings. The company has already supplied training to Kwik-Fit Holdings and was bought as part of a drive to improve staff communication, technical and managerial skills.

JOHN Prescott, deputy prime minister and secretary of state for the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, is to launch the first cars-on-trains service for four years on Monday, March 29. The move is intended to provide companies with the opportunity to make considerable savings in their fleet budgets and improve the working efficiency of their staff.

GAS supply company Transco has added 18 natural gas vehicles worth £450,000 to its natural gas fleet as it pushes to become the greenest fleet in Britain with 600 clean fuelled vehicles in the next five years. The 3.5 tonne, 2.3-litre Mercedes-Benz Sprinters converted to run solely on compressed natural gas by specialist firm Tickfords, enlarge the total green fleet to 40. Twenty-two similar vehicles have operated from Kent since last year.

GOVERNMENT calls for companies to adopt alternative fuels have failed to convince fleets of their aims six months after the launch of the white paper on integrated transport, according to a new survey conducted by Zenith Vehicle Contracts. Despite growing evidence that fleets could face swingeing charges for non-residential workplace parking and congestion charging, a massive 75% of fleet managers questioned by the company, covering a car parc of more than 8,500 vehicles, said they did not see their fleet polices being affected significantly by the measures outlined.

JUNIOR transport minister Glenda Jackson has clashed with the fleet industry after she claimed fuel was only a 'very minor' factor in company and fleet running costs. Her comments act as a slap in the face to firms which are paying out hundreds of thousands of pounds in extra fuel costs each year following swingeing Budget increases in fuel duty.

THE Department of Social Security has received an official vote of confidence in its efforts to lead by example by creating the greenest fleet in Government. It now has a fleet of 27 dual fuel vehicles which run on liquefied petroleum or petrol, following a delivery of 12 LPG Vauxhall Astras last week.

FLEETS intending to convert to alternative fuels have been urged not to dismiss natural gas, despite the market being dominated by liquefied petroleum gas vehicles. The call has been made by the Natural Gas Vehicle Association, which organised a pre-Budget briefing at Westminster to press its case for more tax concessions for alternative fuels.

THE 1999 Budget has fundamentally changed the parameters of several critical fleet decisions. This is most significant in the size of cash allowances required to replace a fully expensed company car. The basis of these calculations was significantly altered by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown's increase in company car tax for all drivers covering more than 2,500 business miles a year.

THE Budget did little to kick-start any increase in residual values, and the long term prospects for inflation in used car prices look remote. An anti-inflationary Budget will not increase the public's disposable income, according to Colin Thornton, sales and marketing director of ACL.

SUPERMARKET giant Somerfield is about to launch a series of roadshows to explain to its staff the impact of the 1999 Budget on their benefit-in-kind tax bills. After attending the Fleet News Budget Breakfast, Somerfield executive Doug Brown decided his company's drivers needed information on the full implications of the tax changes.

THE breakeven points where it makes financial sense for a company car driver to accept free fuel for private motoring have changed significantly following the Budget. Figures calculated by ACL show that a 40% tax payer with a 1.4-2.0 litre company car would need to drive more than 6,935 private miles in a petrol model and 8,187 miles in a diesel model to benefit from free fuel.

FLEET managers will have to focus on cars' carbon dioxide emissions to advise their drivers on the most tax-efficient vehicles under the new company car tax regime scheduled for April 2002. This will create clear winners and losers, despite being revenue neutral to the Inland Revenue, warned Stewart Whyte, managing director of Fleet Audits, who addressed the recent Fleet News Budget Breakfast courtesy of a sponsorship arrangement with Kwik-Fit Fleet.

BMW owners are seeing the best residual values in the country according to specialist trade guides CAP Future Residual Values and Glass's Guide. The manufacturer says the excellent returns on its used models are proof that its concentration on wholelife costs instead of short-term price incentives are what the customer wants.

BRITAIN'S finest in fleet were recognised on Wednesday at the 1999 Fleet News Awards - when 24 awards were presented to fleet managers, vehicle manufacturers and fleet suppliers. About 1,100 people from across the fleet industry packed the Grosvenor House Hotel, London, for the fleet industry 'Oscars'. The top award of the night - UK Fleet of the Year - was won by the Police Authority for Northern Ireland and was presented to head of transport services David Graham, who is in charge of the force's unique 2,700-strong fleet.

MOBILE communications company One 2 One has renewed its deal with Vauxhall for the supply of vehicles for its operations and headquarters fleets. The two-year 250-vehicle agreement sees the continuation of a relationship first established five and a half years ago.

ALMOST 200 ex-fleet cars will go under the hammer at this year's Fleet Show as British Car Auctions stages 'Auction Live 2' - a repeat of last year's popular and successful first physical show auction. BCA will auction about 175 cars, typically about three years old, and representing a wide range of makes, models and derivatives, both petrol and diesel.

DEALERSHIP and contract hire company Ryland Group is in talks which are set to see it sell a majority stake in its leasing subsidiary Ryland Multifleet. The leasing fleet numbers 15,700 vehicles and the company has announced it is in discussions with an unnamed party, which could lead to a cash offer being made for a majority of the equity share capital of Ryland Multifleet.

A TRANSPORT Policy Forum of key Conservative MPs and industry experts is to take up the fight of company car drivers and challenge Labour's integrated transport plans. At Monday's launch of the forum, Gillian Shephard MP, shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Transport and Regions, said one of its key roles would be to identify the stealth taxation of fleets under the current Government.

THE Metropolitan Police is to fit aircraft-style black box data recorders in all its quick-response vehicles in an attempt to reduce the number of road accidents. In the last financial year Met officers responding to 999-type calls were involved in 1,797 accidents, two of which were fatal.

A CONCEPT car unveiled by General Motors Europe at the Geneva Motor Show gives styling clues for the future direction of vehicles from subsidiaries Vauxhall and Opel.