RE: Renault dealers to target fleet to gain 5% share
Just so as I understand... Renault are supplying vehicles through Arval because they have better contract hire rates than the manu's own Finance Co...? Does that mean Arval have bigger kahunas than Renault vis a vis RV's or are Arval storing up a problem that will bite them in the botty in 3 years' time? And the great New Idea to gain market share is to concentrate on the smaller fleets. So, presumably, that will mean the Dealers will have to employ a 'specialist' at around £25k plus a car. And he or she will go pounding the pavement, knocking on doors of all the local businesses to try and drum up a little trade. In 12 months time, it will have cost £30k in wages and NI, 20,000mls on a demo that will need writing back hard to be in with a chance of retailing it, the 'specialist' will have got through a load of shoe leather, armfuls of brochures and booked half a dozen MOT's and supplied a couple of Scenics at cost. They'll leave, disillusioned with the Motor Trade because of the lack of earnings potential and the whole shebang starts over... All in the name of increasing Renault's market share. But at least it gets one of the boxes on the Franchise Requirement Rules ticked, eh?

RE: Renault dealers to target fleet to gain 5% share
A bit unfair GG - Even manufacturers have difficulty in getting all the credit lines they want and an arrangement with Arval provides an additional facility over and above Renault's own finance arm Arval are also French owned - part of BNP Paribas. Doesn't explain the difference in RVs though.

RE: Renault dealers to target fleet to gain 5% share
Totally fair GG IMHO So Renault gives them more discount than the dealers, parts rebate perhaps and has no RV risk. Dealer makes no margin and will get screwed on R&M rates if they get to servicethe vehicle. I hope deadly Darren has insisted the units are repaired by the Franchised network? How many times have MU's targeted the smaller fleets, without success. Same old ideas, they need Ling.............

RE: Renault dealers to target fleet to gain 5% share
DD – What I was trying to say was that even car manufacturers have difficulties in sourcing credit lines so that maybe the reason they have moved their fleet finance to Arval/BNP Paribas is to free up facility within Renault Finance and Renault Business Finance for other purposes (hopefully used cars???). Possibly one of the costs of this required by Arval is more protection of the residual by Renault than that required by RF/RBF. It is though very poorly thought out from the dealers’ perspective.

RE: Renault dealers to target fleet to gain 5% share
From speaking with a Nissan Dealership yesterday this has hit their business quite hard and not in a positive way. After previously finding personal contract hire to be a useful avenue to greater volume and profitability they now have no such facility to offer. Arval do not do Personal Contract Hire!!! This has cost them at least 120 units per year and Nissan will apparently just not listen. They think they will finally take the blinkers off in May when registrations o fthe new Qashqai are affected. Anybody else having issues finding access to personal contract hire funders?

RE: Renault dealers to target fleet to gain 5% share
GG unfortunately have to agree. Big problem now is mfrs put prices up during scrappage and cars now look dear to retail market so when scrappage ends where will the cars go? Same old, same old, nothing new here just Renault jumped in first. The other issue with price hikes is the affect on BIK. End users drive the market not the fleet mgr and with the advent of the internet it plays straight into the hands of brokers and finance houses who can offer all franchises at the click of a mouse. Also in this sector the provision of company cars is declining with the advent of car allowances being provided instead which again benefits the above as they geared on monthly payment and is optical to which car presents best value. Leading on from DDs comments what is interesting is the increasing offers of subsidised service packs, obviously locks car into franchise but at what rates, and this really has been driven by leasing companies who have been chipping away at service costs. I suppose in summary it is easy to criticise Renault but at least they are trying something and as we move forward I am sure desperation will hit someone else and some innovative programme will be launched. Please excuse the sarcasm

RE: Renault dealers to target fleet to gain 5% share
If anyone needs to apologise for the sarcasm, Goalie, it's me! I know the manu's need to do something with the end of scrappage and the greedy price hikes all pointing to New Car sales dropping off a cliff (although the extension to scrappage diverts attention from, but delays, the inevitable), but re-inventing the wheel ain't the way. There must be quite a few manu's secretly panicking like billy-o about what to do when the new cars have to be sold without Gov't support on quality and VFM alone. As the purple-faced boss of a different Man U (see what I did there?) would say: Squeaky Bum Time!