Travelling club class

Is there a vehicle treated with less respect than the pool car? If there is, it’s probably lying in the Avon following an automotive suicide off the Clifton suspension bridge. I’m so fed up with berating staff over the condition of our pool Peugeot, that I’m hatching a cunning plan to replace it.

They see a spell in the pool car as punishment. A rental might get similar amounts of grief, mechanically speaking, but because it’s new and most likely a chance to drive something at least different, it’s less like car custody.

Driving the pool car, on the other hand, is double jeopardy. Your car is out of action, for whatever reason, and the replacement is the same skanky, aircon-less, gutless petrol hack it’s always been. The response seems to be to thrash it for fun, whereupon it just ends up looking and driving worse.

This is my plan. First, get rid of the pool Peugeot. I’m tempted to advertise it on the company noticeboard for a silly price, say £400, and then individually reject any potential buyer whom I know to have been less than nice to it.

Then I’d invite a car club to situate one of their cars on our industrial estate. If you’ve not heard of them, they’re a fairly new method of car rental whereby they dot cars around town so they’re always close by. A clever card both unlocks it and activates the meter and you can rent them for as briefly as an hour.

It means if anyone in the company needs a short-loan car they’d book it online and it goes on our bill. Meeting clients in Scotland would be out (the free mileage limit is pretty low), but for most trips it’d happily replace the pool car. There could be time clashes with other companies on the industrial estate, but our people usually know in advance when they’re likely to need it so other arrangements could be made.

But the best part about a car club car, speaking as fleet manager, are the fines for handing it back dirty or empty. It’s a sensible rule because, unlike with regular rental cars, it might not get valeted before the next person drives it. That’s exactly the stick my staff need to get them to treat temporary cars properly, and I’ll make damn sure it’s wielded with precision. The £25 or so fine will be dealt with exactly the same way as a speeding fine, ie passed directly to the offender. Who knows whether I could persuade a car club to set up shop in our postcode, but just knowing I’m plotting a scheme that fines the grimy and lazy might get my staff treating the Peugeot with more respect.