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Fiat ready to counter recession

Date: 26 February 2009   |   Author: Tristan Young

Adam Pumfrey

The Fiat group is one of the best-placed car makers to weather the recession and come out stronger than it went in.

That's the message from Adam Pumfrey, Fiat and Alfa Romeo fleet director, who has spoken exclusively to BusinessCar.

In 2008 Pumfrey cut the number of cars Fiat and Alfa pumped into daily rental and other short-cycle businesses.

"Last year we made a conscious decision and reduced rental business and short-cycle business," said Pumfrey.

"That means our like-for-like [non-short cycle] fleet business was down only 5%," he claimed. Fiat's overall fleet sales figures were down 20% with short-cycle business included.

"We wanted to make sure supply and demand matched. We're now in a good position and we've got control of the market, and it means we can support the dealers."

Pumfrey also agreed with Enterprise Rent A Cars prediction that daily rental rates will rise in 2009.

"Rental prices will go up, that's the logic of the market," he said. However, Pumfrey didn't think that contract extensions by lease firms would hit Fiat and Alfa.

"We're not big enough to be affected by contract extensions," he explained.

Pumfrey added that his plans for this year were to concentrate on mid-sized fleets.

"We cover the whole market with a corporate team covering 200-plus fleets, an SME team covering 25-200 and dealers covering 0-50.

"We're focusing on the 100-200-strong fleets. That's a market that's been ignored by lease companies and brokers are being squeezed, so smaller brokers that aren't into fleet proper will die out."



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