IF you want an independent assessment of which are the best cars and manufacturers then the UK’s fleet managers are pretty good judges.

These people are professionals, unsentimental about cars which they regard purely in terms of their value for money, running costs, reliability and ability to keep staff on the road, comfortable, safe and smiling.

So, after a survey of literally thousands of fleet managers it is quite some accolade to be voted the best – which is exactly what Vauxhall has been.

Run by Fleet News magazine, the survey has just nominated Vauxhall as the Fleet Manufacturer of the Year.

The quality of Vauxhall dealers (which of course includes Perrys), its range which includes the brilliant Insignia and Astra plus the ecoFLEX low-emission and tax-friendly models, were all cited as factors in Vauxhall’s favour.

While Vauxhall was the overall winner there were other strong performances. For example, the Ford S-MAX was named the best MPV, the Mazda6 took the honours in the estate sector and – no surprise here-  the Jaguar XF added to its bulging trophy cabinet by winning the executive car title. Ford was also praised for its technical innovation.

Surveys come and go and I question both the point and the reliability of a lot of them but this is one which can be trusted because it reflects people whose business is knowing cars and their costs and all those other key criteria mentioned above in real-world conditions.

If they say that Vauxhall, Ford and Mazda have class-leading cars, it’s an opinion that carries weight.

Perrys is a franchised dealer for Vauxhall, Ford and Mazda

THERE has been a lot of talk in the news recently about some motorists complaining about their used cars but at Perrys drivers can buy with complete confidence.

We sell around 20,000 used cars each year and our standards are the highest; they have to be – we are a franchised dealer for several manufacturers and obviously we have to meet their standards but we also have our own values of making sure that customers get good value, tremendous service and peace of mind.

Every used car we sell has a full background check, verifying its mileage and establishing that there isn’t any outstanding finance on it or any of the other pitfalls which are flagged up by these checks. In addition every used car that leaves our forecourts has a three-month parts and labour warranty and every customer is offered the opportunity to take out an extended warranty when they are discussing the sale.

We have a fantastic reputation in the motor trade for value and integrity and we protect it strenuously. We want those 20,000 people a year who buy a used car from us to be happy with their purchase and to tell others so.

As with any other industry there are obviously going to be a few bad apples but you can’t tar everyone with the same brush and if some criticism of certain sectors is justified then it is only fair that praise is given to those who deserve it and we believe that our used car operation falls into this latter category.

Let’s put it this way – we only offer cars for sale that we would be happy to buy ourselves and that’s the best guarantee there is.

Alfa Romeo MiTo

THERE are some cars which are so good that they develop legendary status and their reputation lives on long after they cease production.

In the sports hatchback sector there is the original VW Golf GTI and the Peugeot 205 GTi and I am beginning to wonder if the Alfa Romeo MiTo might not pull off the same trick.

Already a big sales success on the back of its looks, value for money and road manners, it has now become even more desirable with the introduction of the brilliant MultiAir engines which add power while burning less fuel and emitting fewer pollutants.

Even though it has a relatively small capacity of 1.4 litres it comes in two versions with one producing 135 bhp and the other 170 which means there is plenty of poke when you press the throttle to drive it as an Alfa should be – hard – and yet they are also wondrously low polluting and fuel efficient too. MultiAir is a genuine breakthrough in how an engine `breathes’ and both Alfa and its new partner, Chrysler, will be making a lot more of it, from V6 engines to the 900 cc twin cylinder unit due here next year.

But there is more. In a first for this class the MiTo offers active suspension, a technology developed in motor racing which constantly responds to how your are driving and adapts the suspension dampers accordingly.

With the brilliant DNA system too which was already on the car allowing the driver to select from Dynamic, Normal or All-weather for low grip conditions (remember all that wintry weather we’ve endured?) there is an awful lot of driver-focused technology in this little car.

It’s got cute looks, tremendous performance for its class, lots of different price/power variants to suit every pocket and taste.

And it has something else too – it’s Italian and you can see and feel that in lots of little touches when you sit in and drive the car. If you need to ask the question why that is important in a sporting car, you’ll probably never know the answer.

Perrys is a franchised Alfa Romeo dealer

]]> http://blog.perrys.co.uk/2010/03/alfa-romeo-mito/feed/ 0 http://blog.perrys.co.uk/2010/03/f1-season/ http://blog.perrys.co.uk/2010/03/f1-season/#comments Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:09:15 +0000 John Swift http://blog.perrys.co.uk/?p=1302

THE lights have gone green on what promises to be one of the closest Grand Prix seasons in years with the first honours going to Spain and Italy in the shape of Alonso and Farrari.

There are two British World Champions, Button and Hamilton, teamed together at McLaren, challenging double-World Champ Fernando Alonso at Ferrari alongside Felipe Massa, who has returned to prove that the head injuries sustained last summer have not slowed him at all and of course the great Michael Schumacher has come back after three years away to prove that middle-age need be no bar to winning at the highest level.

Seven-time World Champ Schumacher is at the wheel of a silver Mercedes as the German manufacturer returns to Grand Prix racing in its own name for the first time since 1955.

New drivers in new places and of course, some of the names from previous years have gone. BMW and Toyota joined Honda in heading for the door marked EXIT and of the big car manufacturers from before only Renault remains to celebrate its 30^th year in Formula One.

Despite the losses, the grid is bigger this year thanks to new arrivals in the form of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Racing, Lotus resurrects one of the most emotive names in motor sport and there is a new team from Spain.

As if that is not enough of a shake-up refuelling has been banned so cars must go from start to finish on a single tank. How the drivers manage the 175 kgs or so of fuel in terms of nursing the brakes and adapting to the huge weight difference remains to be seen but it adds another challenge for them. Pitstops will continue but only to change tyres and the teams are targeting three-second stops – blink and you’ll miss them!

It’s going to be a classic season ahead!

This blog is published by Perrys, one of the UK’s top car retailers

WITH the scrappage scheme winding down now and into its last couple of weeks it’s time to look back at what an amazing success it has been – and look forward to the sort of deals drivers can expect to get.

To date almost 330,000 new cars have been bought through the scheme which was introduced last May to help the new car industry cope with the recession. This is an amazing number and bigger than probably anyone dared hope for.

No surprise that the bulk of the sales have been in the supermini and medium hatchback sectors, with cars such as the Ford Fiesta and Focus taking the lion’s share of orders.

If you are quick there is still time to take advantage of scrappage which runs until the end of this month but the question now facing the industry is what it intends to do in the rest of the year to keep showroom traffic flowing?

Put it this way, scrappage has undoubtedly bought forward a lot of demand and there could be something of a lull when it ends. There is the threat too of a post-election rise in VAT which increases the cost of a new car.

But the motor industry is nothing if not resourceful and resilient and there is simply no way it is going to allow demand to dry up as it threatened to this time last year.

Understandably, with scrappage going so well, most manufacturers and dealers have been keeping their powder dry but it is certain that through this summer and beyond there is going to be a variety of incentives to tempt buyers into a new car.

Scrappage may be coming to an end but not special deals, promotions and offers. A new car will still be affordable – watch this space – and Perrys – for fantastic new car savings.

WITH the cost of fuel high and presumably set to go higher with the likely post-election tax increases in the next Budget it makes sense for all of us to learn how to drive a little more frugally.

Fuel-saving driving techniques are being taught in a few areas, such as fleet driver training, but I don’t see much evidence of it in my daily motoring.

And yet with a little bit of care, attention and planning the results can be truly spectacular.

Peugeot has just run a pan-European exercise involving four of its cars, all absolutely showroom standard, driving the 650 miles or so from Paris to Geneva for the recent Motor Show.

In wintry conditions, driving routinely in normal traffic and as I said with absolutely no alterations from showroom spec, the mpg figures are astonishing.

The five-door 308 HDi 110 achieved 89.95 miles to the gallon, a 207 HDi did 87 mpg, the new seven-seater 5008 MPV returned 85 mpg and the 3008 HDi 79 mpg.

These are astonishing figures and underline two things – one, that hybrids are not yet the only green solution and two, that with fuel heading back to the £5 a gallon mark you can make a huge difference to your running costs, probably halving them.

Looking ahead and planning, trying to avoid unnecessary slowing down and then re-accelerating, using momentum to let you change up to a higher gear earlier, taking out any unnecessary weight such as carrying heavy items in the boot, keeping the tyres at the right pressure – all these things can make a significant difference to the fuel consumption.

Oh, one other thing as well – it helps if you’re driving a new Peugeot!

Perrys is a franchised Peugeot dealer

FROM being a minor irritant, potholes and the expensive damage they can cause, are now becoming an increasingly big issue.

The hard frosts of this winter are lifting more of the road surface leaving potholes which can damage tyres, wheels, suspension and the steering.

Alloy wheels can easily be scuffed, tyre carcases can be damaged and if the tracking is knocked out of alignment, tyres will wear out prematurely and your steering will be affected. The shock absorbers too take a pounding that they may not be designed for.

Garages are reporting more cars coming in with damage and more elements of the motor industry are now speaking up for the motorist who, when faced with a nasty repair bill, quite rightly asks the question – “Why should I pay for this?’’

Warranty Direct, supplier of warranties for cars out of their manufacturer’s cover has a website www.potholes.co.uk  which gives clear advice on how you can pursue a claim against the relevant authority, and now GEM, formerly The Guild of Motoring Writers, is adding its voice to the campaign to educate drivers of their rights too.

What is clear from studies done by organisations such as GEM and others in the past few years is that drivers are largely in the dark when it comes to who and how to contact someone to try to get some compensation after pothole damage.

Sadly this is a problem that is only going to get worse. Our roads have taken a terrible pounding this winter and road maintenance budgets are usually the poor relation when it comes to allocating council budgets which are themselves being squeezed, so we face more pockmarked, broken roads.

But why should drivers be the innocent victims left picking up the tab? Help is at hand and you need not be out of pocket.

If you spot wheel or tyre damage after hitting a pothole or hear an unusually loud bang when driving into one, log onto to www.potholes.co.uk for a step-by-step guide on what to do and how to pursue a claim.

You can count on Perrys for quality repairs and servicing, and you can book online.

Fiat 500 scores well in visibility tests

NO apologies for returning to a subject recently covered in our blog because it is becoming an increasingly important safety issue and it concerns the amount of visibility a driver has from behind the wheel of modern cars.

It was first highlighted by Which? Magazine several years ago and found that the thick A pillars, those pieces of metal joining the roof to the front wings, while great for making the car stronger were reducing the driver’s vision on tight bends and junctions.

Small objects such as motor cyclists, cyclists and pedestrian could easily be `lost’ in the obscured area and Which?’s research has set car designers and legislators thinking. Vehicle blind spots account for around one per cent of all accidents and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) calculates that eliminating them would prevent around 25 fatal accidents each year.

Which? has revisited the subject and during last year subjected dozens of new models to laboratory testing to find the best – and the worst – cars.

Happily for Perrys, our brands did exceptionally well. The very best car was the tiny Smart ForTwo coupe which is very much a niche product but among more mainstream cars, the Fiat 500 is the best followed closely by the Citroen C3 Picasso and the Ford Galaxy MPV.

Take extra care at junctions though if you’re driving a Porsche Boxster, BMW Z4 or Lexus IS 250C…

Understandably we take it pretty much for granted that modern cars are as safe as can be but nothing – absolutely nothing – underpins road safety as much as the driver being able to see properly. If there is something in the car’s design that hinders that then you should think twice before buying it.

With Fiat, Citroen and Ford you don’t have to look twice…

THERE are a number of options open to car buyers when it come to sourcing finance.

The cheapest and easiest is to write a cheque from your own account but realistically this is not an option for many of us: few domestic budgets allow for such a big outlay in one go which means we have to borrow.

You can go the traditional High Street sources but you will find that after the experiences of the past 18 months or so that this is not as easy as it once was. You can effectively take out loan through your credit card but only this week it was revealed that interest rates being charged by card companies are running at about 18 per cent! That could end up being an expensive loan.

Your dealer will be able to offer finance and this is the preferred route. You can forget any talk about them being much more expensive than other lenders – that simply cannot be true because were it so they would not be doing very much, would they?

Dealers offer a number of finance options of which the main ones are hire purchase (HP), zero per cent finance or a Personal Contract Plan (PCP) and in essence they work as follows:

Hire purchase is suitable for buyers who only want to pay a small deposit and then monthly installments over a reasonably long period.

Zero per cent finance is exactly what it says and sounds attractive but you will have to pay a considerable deposit up front – expect something in the order of 30 per cent of the car’s value.

PCPs have become increasingly popular over the past decade because what you pay finance on is the depreciation of the car. During the negotiations the dealer will give you a figure of what they say the car will be worth in three or four years, whichever timescale suits you. That is called the Guaranteed Future Value and is deducted from the purchase cost and you pay that difference on a monthly basis.

You have to agree to an annual mileage and have the car serviced routinely. At the end of the term you can hand the car back and walk away, pay the outstanding money (the GFV) and own the car or start another PCP on a new car.

Because you only pay for the depreciation of three or four years it is cheap finance and an easy way to get into a new car every few years.

One thing you should be aware of with any finance deal is that you are signing a binding contract committing you to monthly repayments and it is wise to consider what would happen if your circumstances change, through unemployment, illness or anything else that affects your income.

Just as with a mortgage, the money will continue to go out so you need to be certain that you either have enough, or better still, have insurance and there is something called PPI (Payment Protection Insurance) which covers you in the event of a sudden change in your financial circumstances.

None of us know what’s around the corner and it is only prudent to take out PPI – after all, at what would already be a stressful time you don’t want to add to it by having to worry about keeping up the repayments.

PPI is not expensive and Perrys has an excellent record on this which allows you to buy a policy with confidence. Our PPI product represents tremendous value at just eight per cent of a monthly payment for either accident / sickness or unemployment cover.

In pounds, shillings and pence terms, that means that to cover a monthly loan payment of £100 the Perrys’ PPI cover works out at just £1.84 a week.

We have been complimented by the FSA (Financial Services Authority) on our processes for explaining to customers exactly what they are buying and what they are covered for and the company we use to provide the policies, Mapfre Abraxas, a big motor industry finance company, is the only PPI supplier to the car industry to have received the recognition of the Chartered Institute of Insurers and is The Institute of Transport Management’s UK Motor Industry Company of the Year 2009.

A dealer can offer you a lot of flexibility on how you finance your car to make sure you have the instrument which best suits you – but whichever it is, taking out PPI is prudent, common sense.

Discuss various car finance options with Perrys

THE scrappage scheme has been a tremendous success, a scheme that really caught the public’s imagination and the hundreds of thousands of new cars sold on the back of it since last spring are the result.

But even though it’s closing at the end of March it doesn’t mean that buyers are going to be short of offers. The car trade is remarkably resilient and very effective at producing eye-catching, money-off promotions that can save customers significant amounts of money.

Take Vauxhall, for example. Until the end of March it is running its `swappage’ scheme on selected models that allows customers to trade in a car over seven years old with road tax, an MOT and insurance and get a discount of at least – note those words, at least – £3,000.

Initially available on the new Astra and most of the Corsa range, the swappage offer has now been extended to cover the Insignia (2009 European Car of the Year), and the Meriva and Zafira MPVs.

That £3,000 discount is just the starting point. For some models, say the Zafira 1.6 Life, the discount under the swappage scheme is getting on for nearly £6,000, bringing it below £13,000.

Now it is said by some that you can get these discounts by hard haggling anyway but let’s be honest, unless you’re buying in bulk for a big fleet, how is the average buyer going to talk a dealer down by nearly £6,000 on a Zafira? It just isn’t going to happen which is why short-term offers such as these really give buyers a golden opportunity to get a cheap new car.

Peugeot is another with its scheme for March, with a variety of no deposit, low APR, or 25 per cent deposit and zero APR deals available pretty much across its range, from the little 107 city car to the 3008 (What Car? magazine’s car of the year 2010) and including the 308 CC convertible.

Everyone knows that scrappage is going to end soon and it’s been great while it lasted but don’t expect the car trade to just sit back afterwards. There are already some superb offers available if you know where to look.