According to Citroen fleet boss Andrew Wady, the brand's biggest problem remains its image.

The challenge for the French carmaker, he says, is improving it: "Our products have come on leaps and bounds, but I think the average Joe in the street's perception hasn't moved forward nearly as much as the cars have.

"The brand in France is very different to here. We have a strong proposition across the board. We need to provide good-looking cars to break into the marketplace and, indeed, we are seeing uplift over preceding models. The only thing holding us back is the brand image."

Half-year fleet sales for Citroen in 2011 totalled 21,076 cars and 10,180 vans. This makes up about 52% of its total sales, compared with a market as a whole that stands at 58%, says Wady. He adds that fleet registrations are slightly down year-on-year, and attributes this to strong retail sales and pulling out of hire channels. Currently, with the exception of 100 vehicles, Citroen is not involved in rental. "There were 2000-3000 vehicles in rental this year initially," says Wady. "I'd look at getting back into it with a limited volume. The risk of rental is undermining your RV position, but it can do quite a good job of raising the profile of vehicles.

"We did a batch of 200-300 DS3 with Avis, as part of its premium fleet, which was good." He anticipates having up to 3000 units in rental next year.

RVs is one area that Jason King, previously head of market intelligence at Eurotax Glass's, has been tasked with tackling, in his role as manager - whole life-costs at Citroen. At the time of his appointment in January this year, Citroen said King would "seek to communicate news of fuel-saving developments, such as the brand's full-electric micro-hybrid and diesel hybrid drivetrains, to key industry influencers, and will help to effectively position Citroen products in the fleet marketplace". Wady adds that King's focus is day-to-day relationships with the industry.

King has recognised that launch prices weren't brilliant and he has also worked with the product team to improve specification, says Wady. For example, the upcoming DS5 (see 'DS brand takes shape', opposite) has had its specification tweaked to include alloys, leather and satnav, and the recently launched DS4 has been upgraded to include alloys to make it look more sporty, as the UK market desires.

Another manufacturer tactic for improving RVs is bringing back used cars into the network. Wady explains: "We have a strong used car proposition. About 50% of cars come back into the used car proposition."

Wady believes that a fleet/retail mix of 50/50 is "about right", although he sees the overall fleet market growing next year to up to 60%. "We see more customers buying through contract hire. And problems with retail market won't rectify themselves straight away.

"The other reason [for fleet growth] is that it's clear a lot of manufacturers, as the retail market has weakened, are using fleet to force volume into the marketplace."

Growth in fleet for Citroen has come from both national fleet sales and local business centre fleet sales. Of 180 dealers, half of these are deemed business centres, which ensures good coverage. "They have to commit to a dedicated sales person and there's quite a lot of aftersales standards," says Wady. The business centres will have been going for two years by year-end and are going "really well actually", aided by a team of four regional business centre managers, working with the dealers. Wady sees more growth with dealer SME deals, but says there has been a perceptional issue that Citroen is only geared up for big business such as Royal Mail.

He also sees growth with leasing and rentals companies and expects fleet car sales to finish on 36,500 cars this year, and increase by 10% next year. Van volume is set to be 18,272 units in 2011, with an increase of 6% in 2012.

Citroen's sub-brand, DS, is bringing more opportunity for fleet growth. The arrival of the DS3 last year, a supermini, set a high standard, but has limited interest in the business arena thanks to its three doors. However, the arrival of the DS4 and DS5 gives Wady a "a much better channel to get into the [fleet] sector". He explains:?"DS gives us the opportunity to get into user chooser. And we're having huge success with salary sacrifice this year. With DS going in there, it sits comfortable within a salary sacrifice scheme with low CO2 emissions.