i is for important

I love the guy so pleased with himself for having an Astra CD saloon - in white. I wonder what he'd have now?

When my late stepfather came to the UK at the end of his career to oversee the European operations the first document he had from the Sales Director was a rationale on why the sales fleet should be upgraded in terms of car class. The owner drove a Bentley and Step-dad was on his third Benz in a row.

Step dad looked at the report, then the recorded mileage of the fleet and compared it to his own mileage. He always drove everywhere from the home in Germany within Europe and planned his diary so that there was as little wasted time as possible. Then he looked at the short haul flight numbers (which of course came with the mileage rewards which were meaningful back then - he himself was an AA million-miler) and told the Sales Director “When I see that these cars are going to be used for business travel properly and a subsequent reduction in air travel costs that justifies the extra cost of nicer cars you can have them.”

The nice cars never arrived. Even more amusing was the fleet manager came up with some figure that would be payable for Step dad to keep his last Merc. By this time the business had been purchased by a large German Corporate and a fellow board member heard of this and said “nonsense; your last car is just a retirement package item.”

From my memory company cars and wranglings over them were the biggest cause of lost productivity.

All of our company car users have now taken the cash option, which is nice since I'd been landed with the fleet manager role.

As BB says it was a large time cost matched only by the amount of discussion about bonuses and their calculation.

It pisses me off that I can have no contact with a colleague for nearly 3 months and then when their quarterly bonus is due they're never away from me, querying EVERY figure and calculation. This despite them never actually having any problems with the numbers once they've been taken through them item by item.
Don't people understand that this is counter-productive in that the person holding their hand, i.e. me, gets irritated and then does absolutely zero to help them out with any non-productive issues they may have?

I had one of them collar me in the office kitchen a couple of years ago when they were whining about the size of their annual bonus, which is discretionary, and I told them fairly bluntly that a) it was out of my hands, I only do the calculation rather than set the criteria and b) I don't get a bonus and had little sympathy for their plight.

None of them are people I'd choose to spend much time with anyway, I don't know if all sales/BDM people are like that.

Like you, as the senior finance person, the car fleet was always one of my responsibilities. Along with buildings and facilities, travel policies, expenses rules, the staff canteen, HR, computer systems, was the coffee good enough, who is it that steals all the teaspoons etc etc. Oh and running the financial side in my spare time after all that lot. 

Sometimes the fleet job has its advantages. In my last job in the South East, we had a fleet of over 100 vehicles and a very tame leasing company. So I was was always able to negotiate some interesting weekend test drives and often had a spare car or two lying about for use over and above my own car, plus needing to "receive and test" all new car deliveries before they were handed over (officially to make sure we got the spare keys and radio code before they got lost) resulted in some good test drives. At other times, the inevitable whining about what grade of Astra or Cavalier software engineers should have did become rather tiresome. 

And yes, sales people can al be complete cocks about cars. I still remember my first company car moment after I joined my next employer in the Midlands. One of the sales managers had ordered his BMW 3 series and due to a mix up on the order (before my time thankfully and it was never quite clear if it was his or somebody else's cock up) the wrong alloy wheels had been specified. Now his BMW with the wrong alloy wheels on was, basically, the end of the world to this guy. "What the fuck was I going to do about it" he demanded. Had he been polite I might have tried to help, but he got the "nothing" reply. He complained all the way to the CEO. Who luckily backed me up. 

Company cars used to be a perk designed to offer an improved package rather than as an actual work tool but that's been taxed out of existence over the years. We use our company cars as actual tools of the job but there is growing levels of decent, especially among the younger consultants who don't do much driving on their spare time, that the cost to them in tax is becoming something of a burden. We have fuel cards too so the tax is double and for a typical Focus sized petrol hatchback, which most are given by the lease company when they start, is taxed at £250/month. A number have started asking to hand back their fuel card but good luck getting that agreed to.

What many, myself included, find a little annoying is that the directors get a higher budget for their cars which has allowed them all to move to PHEVs, but the rest of the company gets a budget that doesn't quite stretch to anything other than a base spec Ioniq plug in. So they're getting the benefit of a lower tax bill and we're not. They've so far also refused to look at EVs which a lot of us could probably manage with in terms of range.

I remember watching this years ago, and I didn't quite understand what it was about. Now that I've watched it back, it seems like a load of bollocks.

They're all smug gits but Fiesta boy comes across as especially twattish. Primera guy looks like Jimmy Carr, so much so I initially thought this was some sort of comedy parody.

Funny watching it and being in sales myself.
It’s very different now and in the Bay Area, because nobody really cares about what you drive.
Tesla employees literally drive all types of cars- I’ve seen top of the line Camaros, Hummers and Hellcats in the factory car parks.
I get whatever rental Hertz gives me every week.
I call them, tell them I need a car and usually get Kia or a Toyota.
My criteria are that it must have CarPlay, a comfortable driving position (difficult to get one dialled in where I’m not in pain after 4 hours in the seat) self driving functions and radar controlled cruise control- something I never thought I’d like, but doing 6-700 miles a week means it is great for those 200+ mile journeys where you’re on a highway all the time.
I occasionally insist on an i badge and a Saville Row hanger for my spare t shirts...
The documentary is so dated though... early 90’s at its finest.

They really do fit the paperclip salesman profile that used to be mentioned in these parts.