News - Page 2232

NISSAN is celebrating success in last year's British Touring Car Championship with the launch of the limited edition Primera GT. Putting out 150bhp from its 2.0-litre engine, the GT is available in five- and four-door versions priced at £19,000 on-the-road.

DAIHATSU has slashed £1,500 from the list price of the Hijet MPV, reducing the on-the-road price from £9,495 to £7,995 - making it the UK's cheapest six-seater.

BIRMINGHAM-based car leasing company Autolease has won the Institute of Transport Management Award for Innovation 1999.

THE Czech Government has chosen Skoda's Octavia as the official car for ministers and Government officials worldwide. The first of 200 stretched Octavia Laurin and Klement hatchbacks have been delivered by Skoda Auto to the Government seat in Prague.

PRESSURE from fleets for easy access to alternative fuels has sparked a £15 million investment programme by oil giant BP to create the largest network of forecourt liquefied petroleum gas filling sites in the country. The company is aiming to have 300 of its forecourts dispensing LPG within the next five years and wants to have 75 sites on-line by the millennium.

TOYOTA is launching five new cars and two new engines - a direct injection petrol and common rail diesel - within the next 12 months. Two of the new cars are known - the supermini Yaris and the 'baby' Lexus IS200 - while the other three are believed to bear a close relation to concept cars shown at recent international motor shows.

TOYOTA has set up a new pan-European fleet sales operation based in Brussels to help it achieve an ambitious increase in sales across the continent. Juan Jose Diaz Ruiz, executive vice-president of Toyota Motor Europe Marketing and Engineering, said the new department had begun operations three months ago with the aim of increasing the fleet share of Toyota's pan-European sales from 5% to 10%.

PRE-REGISTRATION for the 1999 Fleet Show - and Fleet Shows of the future - can now be done on-line via a dedicated internet site. Developed in association with the RAC, the Fleet Show website (click <A HREF="/cgi-bin/logger.pl?FleetShow-">here</A> for details) contains everything visitors need to know in advance of attending the fleet industry's biggest event of the year.

TWO new engines have been added to a revised Fiat Brava and Bravo range which has undergone trim-level badging changes. The S has been dropped, leaving the SX with an improved standard specification as the base model for the Brava and Bravo.

BP has launched a new ultra-low sulphur diesel product by revealing it has already been available in many sites for months. The new fuel is already available at 75% of its 1,600 filling stations, allowing the oil company to leapfrog rivals Shell and Esso which have just started rolling out the fuel to their own site.

DEVON and Cornwall Police has taken a novel approach to meeting demands for fleets to become more environmentally friendly by taking a City-L three-wheeled electric buggy on trial. The clean machine is the only one of its type in the country and was spotted by one of the force's officers, Pc Oliver Tayler, who thought the £4,500 machine would be a good mode of transport for his work as a youth liaison officer.

THE International League for the Protection of Horses has outsourced its 25-strong fleet to Toomey Hire and Leasing. The charity had been running its fleet in-house as an extra administrative duty and with no dedicated fleet manager, and decided there could be cost savings through outsourcing.

PRICE is set to become the crucial factor in fleet service providers' ability to maintain existing contracts and win a bigger share of the £1.4 billion market. So important will aggressive pricing become that it will replace the fleet aftermarket service's determination to win custom by developing innovative and customer-led products and services.

VAUXHALL'S new satellite-based communication system, OnStar, will make its first appearance in the new Vectra when it is launched in March. The system will be one of several hi-tech launches from manufacturers this year, including Ford and Volvo, to feed growing demand for more information to save time while drivers are on the road.

LAND Rover has announced the Range Rover 1999 line-up is to be expanded with two new models in the range, one of which marks a price reduction and better spec for a mid-range model and the other becomes the new top of the range choice. This comes only days after the Rover Group revealed production would halt for one week on the Range Rover to allow for a fall-off in demand.

VAUXHALL is aiming to take a 12% slice of UK light commercial vehicle sales this year despite losing almost 1.4% share in the rising market of 1998 in which fleets accounted for 57% of LCVs. The bullish forecast of 26,000 new griffin-badged registrations means the manufacturer will have to sell an extra 4,000 vans, a rise of 2.7% on last year, in a market which is expected to suffer a drop of 9% from 237,000 units to 217,000 units after eight successive years of growth.

MINIBUS drivers are to be made to undergo compulsory checks for criminals records and for medical problems. The Government is set to introduce the new law later this year.

DAIHATSU Export, a joint venture company formed between the Nidd Vale Group and Daihatsu UK, has negotiated a major agreement to boost the sales of tax-free Daihatsu vehicles to British diplomats and members of the armed forces stationed in mainland Europe. The company has appointed Belgium-based distributor Pool Autos to handle tax-free sales for the full Daihatsu range.

AUDI has announced prices and specification details for the new range-topping 4.2-litre V8 quattro versions of its A6 saloon and Avant models. The manufacturer unveiled plans to introduce the 300bhp engine - as fitted in the A8 - into the range, featuring Tiptronic transmission, earlier this year.

THE business arm of Chrysler Jeep Imports UK, CJ Financial Services, has been restructured bringing with it a new national sales manager and a team of 10 regional finance managers to service the manufacturer's network of UK regions. The move follows a highly successful 1998 in which CJFS saw a rise in business of more than 20% compared with its 1997 figures.

FLEET managers are warning Rover that a crisis of confidence over the marque is threatening its future in the fleet market. Their fears will set alarm bells ringing at Rover, where chiefs are reeling from the departure of Bernd Pischetsrieder, the chairman and Rover's 'ally' at parent company BMW.

FLEETS are set to benefit from a cut-throat battle for business in the breakdown recovery market after Cendant Corporation, owner of Green Flag, pulled out of a deal to buy RAC Motoring Services. It has vowed instead to attack its rival and the AA for market share.

FLEET News (FNN's sister title) is to hold a Budget Breakfast for fleet chiefs to find out from fleet and tax experts the impact on their business of Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown's March 9 Budget. The Breakfast will be held on Tuesday, March 16 at the Hilton National, Cobham, starting at 8.30am and will last for about two hours.

ICA (Holdings) has made its first move into Europe with the acquisition of a major French vehicle auction company for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition of SEA is the first step in a major European expansion programme which will see further acquisitions and new sites opening in cities throughout France and in other countries across the Continent.

EDINBURGH-based John Menzies has switched contract hire supplier for its 500-strong solus Rover fleet for the second time in 16 months. Price is understood to be behind the distribution company's decision to undergo the upheaval of integrating a new supplier so soon after the award of the previous contract.

FLEETS running BMWs could find cars grinding to a halt as engines fall foul of rogue filling stations selling petrol with a high sulphur content. Already about 1,000 BMWs have had engines replaced as a result of the fuel, which eats through the coating inside the engines.

MANUFACTURERS are slashing thousands of pounds off the price of new cars to 'get the Government off their backs' it was claimed this week. Coupled with the most competitive new car market in history and widespread criticism that UK new car prices are too high when compared with vehicle prices on the continent, numerous car makers are cutting prices and loading vehicles with extra specification.

FLEETS will be targeted with a much wider range of models from some Japanese manufacturers in the new millennium following the end of the 'gentlemen's agreement' to restrict the volume of imports they can bring into the UK. Suzuki, Mazda and Subaru are among companies which are predicting the end of the agreement will spark a surge in the sales and the type of products they supply.

A EUROPEAN Union report on car pricing throughout Europe has admitted that currency fluctuation is a major factor in price disparity throughout the Continent. While car prices in the UK still remain higher than many countries in Europe, the size of the difference reduced between May and November, a period when the value of Sterling was in decline.

COMPANIES could be throwing money down the drain if they ignore the benefits of employing a skilled and qualified person to manage their fleet needs, an industry expert has warned. Even outsourcing fleet operations does not mean a company can wash its hands of all responsibility for its vehicles.