BusinessCar has reached a historic milestone with its 200th issue providing eight years of essential news, company car reviews and analysis to the fleet industry.
Born out of Fleet Week and Fleet Management magazines, the first edition hit desks on 13 September 2006 with the launch of the BusinessCar Power List – the definitive rundown of the industry’s most influential people that remains the definitive list to this day, and will appear for the ninth time next month.
When the first BusinessCar was published, the fleet and leasing industry was largely unaware of the looming recession that would hit within two years, broadband was not widely available yet, and the new car market was in rude health, outpacing 2013’s figure of 2.0 million at 2.3 million registrations.
Looking through the pages of issue one reveals some interesting talking points (see right), some of which are amusing given the passage of time and knowing the key pressures for business car drivers today. Over the next few pages you’ll find the key issues from the very first issue.
The most important person eight years ago – Gordon Brown
The then-chancellor of the exchequer and now former Prime Minister held the nation’s purse strings, and topped BusinessCar’s first Power List. The dramatic growth in diesel sales, which now represents 53% of total car registrations in the UK, owed nothing to Brown, who refused to tilt the pump price advantage away from petrol via positive duty discrimination.
The big news – employee mileage payments, misfuelling and Lancia’s return to the UK
The lead story for issue one found Birmingham City Council hit with a £39,000 fine after breaking employee contracts by cutting business mileage rates. The council was also hit with a £100,000 legal bill for the pleasure.
While some manufacturers have eradicated the problem of misfuelling with nozzle technology such as Ford’s Easy Fuel system, the repair costs hit Lloyds TSB Autolease (ahead of its merging with Lex in 2008) with a bill of more than £250,000 from its fleet of 130,000 vehicles. Fiat Group also talked up its plans to relaunch Lancia in the UK, although in the end it merged its brand into Chrysler here when the rebadged Ypsilon and Delta eventually launched in 2011. The Delta has already been dropped and it’s likely the Ypsilon will not be replaced.
Opinion – the fall of biofuel
A BusinessCar opinion piece predicted the likely downfall of biofuel as a mainstream fuel option for UK business drivers. Writer Guy Bird believed there was a dangerous whiff of déjà vu surrounding biofuel, which at the time had a growing reputation as a potential green fuel of the future. Would the Government allow it to become another LPG in disguise? Yes, it would, as it turned out.
Fast forward to 2014 and biofuel is long gone, and the industry is now focused on plug-in hybrid and electric vehicle technology as the growth market in alternative-fuelled vehicles. Models such as the BMW i8 and Tesla Model S are capturing the minds of enthusiasts and techno nuts globally and the Government is investing millions to encourage adoption. It seems unlikely that the same fate could befall EVs in eight years’ time
Opinion – UK base interest rates at 4.75% in September 2006
In BusinessCar’s second opinion piece for the debut issue, it’s funny looking back at how businesses were calling a possible move to a 5% interest rate unacceptable considering they have now been at 0.5% since 5 March 2009. Rupert Saunders wrote: “A further rise in rates is likely to depress the market still further – good news for fleet managers looking to drive a hard bargain on replacement cars this quarter but not for the retail motor industry as a whole.” The Bank of England has ruled out an increase in interest rates for 2014 due to a lack of wage growth in the UK economy.
Fleet sales figures – prestige brands having a bad time
Prestige German brands rule the roost in the UK in terms of profitability, and brands such as BMW are dominant in fleet too. However, the picture back in 2006 wasn’t the same. The brakes on the new car market were starting to pump in 2006 with a 4% reduction in the fleet market for the traditionally slow month of August, and prestige brands in particular were hit ahead of the September plate-change. Audi was the only major exception, continuing its growth due to the launch of its latest A6. BMW was only in eighth position for total registrations in August 2006 and was nowhere to be seen in the top 10 models sold. That’s changed significantly, and the BMW 3-series was the seventh most popular model in the UK in 2013 with 43,494 registrations, according to SMMT figures, while BMW and Audi ranked four and five in fleet registrations last year.
