Thought this may be of some interest.
2.2 FLEETS IN AUSTRALIA
The largest passenger car fleets are likely to be those operated by Telstra and the Australian
Defence Forces.
Since 1986, fleet vehicles have comprised the majority of new car sales (see Figure 1). This
is true for the Australian-based car manufacturers (and particularly so for Ford and Holden)
but not for the other manufacturers (see Figure 2). In 1997, Ford and Holden sold 72% of
their new vehicles to fleets. The corresponding figure for Toyota and Mitsubishi was 61%.
More than 60% of new cars sold to fleets in 1997 were in the “upper medium” size class,
compared to about 15% of sales to private individuals (see Table 1).
5.9 HOLDEN’S FLEET SALES
The following information was supplied by Mr Ralph Stevenson, National Fleet Sales
Manager for Holden’s.
1. What safety features are fleet buyers interested in?
There are really no consistent or generic fleet responses. His personal impression of fleets
generally is that going back a year or so, there was a strong buyer attitude that saw the fleet
safety choice as between ABS or airbag(s). The general balance was that ABS was
preferable because it avoided the crash in the first place with attendant savings in both
potential injury and vehicle repair costs.
Today, there is some confusion or uncertainty as to the actual cost - benefit trade off of the
various options. Fleets no longer have to consider only ABS and driver airbag but now
compare vehicles with standard features of passenger and side airbags, seat belt pretensioners
and promotion of the invisible Safety Cell structures.
Currently, those fleets with an active policy for OH&S issues tend to take a higher position.
There are a number of fleets that have adopted a policy of specifying
Commodore Acclaim
models rather than
Executive within the Holden range of vehicles. This is because Holden
has always specified the Acclaim to have all or most of the safety features currently available
from Holden. Most of the fleets with these
Acclaim preference policies are Australian "Blue
Chip" corporates or in the Government sector. In a couple of instances the policy results from
a personal position by the fleet decision maker and a belief that higher residual values make
the policy work financially.
2. Are fleet purchasers able to specify particular safety features or combinations other
than those available to private buyers?
No. Private buyers are able to purchase all the same models as fleets except for Taxi and
Police variants (which are not safety feature specification differences). From time to time
limited edition models are offered to private buyers (fleet discounts are not generally available
for these models). However these models typically have luxury rather than safety features.
3. What particular packages do they request?
Holden’s is unable to answer quantitatively at an option level for individual buyer types.
However,
overwhelmingly the volume seller to business fleets is a V6 automatic Commodore
Executive sedan with air conditioning and no other options. There is a general perception that
highly optioned Executive (base) model vehicles do not receive full value for the options in
the used market, so fleets generally avoid adding options – either luxury or safety type. They
equally do not (apart from those fleets mentioned above) select the Acclaim even though
Acclaim does manage to recover more of the value for the features in the used car market than
a highly optioned Executive because of the "badge" premium.
http://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/216484/muarc166.pdf
