Who needs company cars?

Date: 02 May 2007

The Insider is a fleet manager with years of invaluable experience

Avoiding getting sidetracked by my dream of becoming a dachshund breeder, I imagined the gaping hole that would open up in the British economy if, at a stroke, companies turned around and said: "Look, we know about copolymers, we don't know anything about cars. Go buy your own."

The amount of money flowing around simply because someone four decades ago got the idea to pimp the pay package with a Vauxhall Victor must be staggering. There's 50% of the new car industry for a start, and it ain't the bargain end. With their own money, people go out and buy Peugeot 207s; give them a nice plump company allowance and suddenly it's a BMW 320d. Sales of upper medium cars in the retail sector are half what they are the fleet market.

Then there's the multi-million pound millstone designed to make sure we're all being taxed correctly. The HMRC beaver away to make sure every last loophole has been bricked up, ensuring the tax-advice industry will never lack for work, expanding company fleet staff, and giving publications like this plenty to write about. All so we can be perfectly sure that when Johnson in sales takes the pool car home for the weekend, it will be correctly logged onto his P11D form.

And what about all the people who ring me up? Driver trainers, computer software floggers, telematics companies, insurance, leasing, fast-fits etc etc. All there to support an industry that, if need be, could be dismantled tomorrow without almost any effect on the smooth running of the country.

Sure, there'd be some health and safety issues, but nothing that couldn't be eliminated with a single line in the employee contract: "Employees who use their car for work must own a car under two years old." Anyone with that clause gets paid more. Okay, there might have to be some structure in place for commercial vehicle fleets, but not necessarily for cars.

Of course my fantasy will remain just that. Like free health care, the company car has been too-long ingrained in the British psyche for anything to change. I'm not sure I even want it too (I'd quickly miss the lack of demonstration vehicles available to dachshund breeders, for example). But I do wonder about the sheer scale of an industry that grew up simply because companies weren't allowed to raise wages. Like the rise of the cane toad in Australia, the company car quickly took root in the fertile mind of the British car-lover and gave companies a recruiting edge that has proven extremely hard to blunt.

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