In a survey carried out by Auto Express in which 29,000 of its readers were questioned, it emerged that the Skoda Yeti was the most satisfying car to own, in terms of ease of use, value for money, build quality and reliability; this is like winning four gold medals in the Olympics. These results came as no surprise to us; our Skoda contract hire clients are always delighted with their choice. And what do they do at the end of their leasing term when it comes time to choose another vehicle? They nearly always  lease a Skoda again; usually not even considering another manufacturer.

A runner up in this survey of customer satisfaction was the Skoda Superb and another Skoda the Octavia was in fourth place behind the Mercedes E Class, also voted into the top five was the impressive Jaguar XF, hardly surprising when you consider that you drive one of the best luxury cars on the market so cheaply; you can lease a Jaguar XF for just £398 plus Vat per month. The car that Auto Express readers said had improved the most, was the Toyota Yaris, which was up 32 places, the Honda CR-V 17 places and the Mini was up 14 places.

  Leasing a Skoda offers one of the best deals around; they are reliable, customer service at the dealerships is excellent and they look great. In spite of all this we still find that sometimes when we suggest to a client that the best value for money in their price range is to lease a Skoda , some still say “Oh no not a Skoda ". This attitude dates back many years, long before Skoda was taken over by Volkswagen and the build quality brought up that of VW cars. Those that still think like that are losing out on a superb vehicle. It is quite surprising how some find it difficult to forget Skoda's old image.

Due to their good residual values, Skoda leasing is very economical; you can lease a Skoda Yeti for just £199 plus Vat per month. The Octavia for £209 plus Vat per month and the monthly cost to contract hire a Skoda Superb is £248 plus Vat per month. Whichever model you choose from this excellent manufacturer, you won’t be disappointed.

Sometimes it’s difficult to believe how Jaguar XF contract hire can be so cheap, when you consider what it has to offer; which is luxury and style at the same cost as a run of the mill saloon car. Indeed depending on the model, you can pay quite a bit more to lease a Ford Modeo than a jaguar XF. The XF has won many awards and with justification; apart from looking great it’s wonderful to drive.

It is also difficult to believe just how economical such a large vehicle can be, there a lot of cars, far smaller than the XF and they have the same fuel consumption; which is a combined cycle of 52.3 mpg. CO2 emissions are good too at just 149 g/km. Where else would you get that type of economy from a car that turns heads wherever it goes? 

When it comes to Jaguar XF contract hire the figures are even more impressive; we have a Jaguar XF leasing offer at the moment, which is £398 plus Vat per month, quite extraordinary value. When it comes to extras, for most clients, there is no need to add extras because it comes with everything they want. Needless to say the XF has a Euro NCAP five star safety rating. If you decide to lease a Jaguar XF you won’t be disappointed 

It is not a good idea to have employees using their own car, for a number of reasons. It is estimated that there are 5,000,000 private vehicles being used on company business in the UK, this is where the employee receives a car or mileage allowance, instead of the company providing a car; normally on contract hire and insured on the company’s group policy. It is easy to understand why companies choose the route of allowing employees to use their own vehicle; it often appears to be the simplest most cost effective way for employees to visit clients.

The other attractions are that there is no capital outlay and no car leasing payments; also should it become necessary to dismiss an employee or make them redundant the company doesn’t get stuck with the car. Most importantly they are free from the responsibilities of maintenance and insurance, or so they think. In practice it does not free them from this liabilty; a company cannot wash its hands of the responsibility, just because the vehicle is owned by the employee.

So the question is how can you make sure that a vehicle that doesn’t belong to you is fully legal, because that is your responsibility as an officer of a company when the employees are using their own vehicles for company business? You must ensure that the vehicle is fully legal and roadworthy. Who is going to go down to the company car park on a regular basis and check the vehicles tyres and brakes, tax disc and make sure the MOT is up to date?

Then there is insurance you need to make sure that the vehicle is not only insured but insured to drive on company business – many are not – and that it is kept up to date; many employees pay their insurance monthly but if they fail to keep up the payments, how will you know?

If there is an accident particularly if there is a death, the company directors can he held responsible. Those who are operating this car allowance system could benefit from reading up on The Corporate Manslaughter Act. If on the other hand a company is providing contract hire company vehicles they have a lot less to worry about; the vehicle will on average be around eighteen months old, regularly maintained and taxed by the car leasing company. The vehicle will be insured on the company’s group policy.

The only other thing to bear in mind, regardless of the car scheme you operate, is that it is your responsibility to ensure that the employee has a current driving licence and that you are aware of any convictions. Having sight of an employee’s driving licence at outset - or even as some companies accept, a photocopy of the licence - is not satisfactory. You need to do regular licence checks, this is a service most contract hire companies provide for clients.

On one occasion when checking a major company's employees we discovered that the company chairman’s own chauffer had been disqualified for drink driving. These checks are very important because apart from the legal position, if a contract hire car is written off by an uninsured employee, the car leasing company will require you to pay the full market value of the vehicle plus early termination penalties. 

BMW leasing  clients have already started to enquire about the new BMW M6, which will be out later this year but they shouldn’t expect the BMW contract hire rates to be anything other than seriously expensive for this vehicle, with a new price of nearly £94,000 for the coupe; leasing costs are going to be high. This new version is going to be fast; the coupe  can achieve 62mph in 4.2 seconds and only slightly slower for the convertible version at 4.3 seconds.

Both versions are limited to 155mph, if that’s not fast enough for you, you can opt for the M Driver's Package, which increases the top speed to 189mph. That is fine but dont modify the vehicle yourself, because it can invalidate the insurance; if you “chip” a vehicle's engine and dont inform your insurer you are, in the event of a serious accident” providing the insurance company with a perfect excuse to repudiate the claim. Imagine if this BMW M6 were written off, the contract hire  company would be asking you to pay the market value of the vehicle; perhaps around £90,000 if it were at an early stage of the car leasing contract, plus early settlement charges; enough to ruin some companies.

A number of recent surveys and studies have revealed that BMW drivers are considered to be the most aggressive drivers on the road and this seemed to be confirmed by a survey carried out by Onepoll, to find out if the drivers of certain vehicles sound their horn more than others. It emerged that 53% of  BMW drivers admitted to sounding the horn at least once on every journey, whereas 95% of Nissan drivers said they never use their horn except in an emergency.

BMW contract hire is one of our most popular lines and certainly many company car drivers will often do whatever they can to stretch their budget to a BMW, even if it means contributing to the cost themselves by way of salary sacrifice. Whilst we were always aware that this was partly motivated by prestige, we assumed that those who opted to lease a BMW , did so mainly because they wanted to drive a safe and comfortable car; clearly there is more to it than that.

Whilst the Onepoll survey didn’t go as far as looking at which BMW models were the culprits, we suspect that those who lease a BMW  such as the 1 and 3 Series, are perhaps inclined to drive more aggressively, although of course it difficult to imagine the driver of a BMW M3 not driving aggressively.

There is of course the possibility that those clients who chose a BMW as opposed to say Nissan contract hire , tend to be more competitive and therefore in more of a hurry; there is evidence that competitive individuals are more stressed and tend to rush around more making them more impatient; often this impatience manifests itself behind the wheel.

Our impression is that those who lease a BMW 7 Series are on the whole those who have already arrived and are therefore generally less competitive. Although Jaguar drivers who we would have put in the same category, emerged in the Onepoll survey  to be the second worst offenders, with 45% sounding their horn at least once on every journey.

To confuse matters even further Fiat drivers were the third worst at 43%. Perhaps a lot of Italians drive Fiats; in Italy if you delay the cars behind you by a split second when moving off from the lights, you will be deafened by those behind you sounding their horns.

At the risk of being classed as an aggressive and impatient driver, it’s still worth leasing a BMW; they are wonderful cars.

Renault is axing a number of vehicles in its range and introducing some new models, in an attempt to increase sales and profitability. Renault leasing is not proving to be very popular amongst our clients and total sales this year are expected to be between 70,000 and 80,000; less than 2010.

There are five models to be axed, amongst them the Espace and Laguna, the five only represent 10% of Renault ’s UK sales, so it seems to make a lot of sense to get rid of them. The range will in future be the Clio Supermini, Twingo, Megane and Scenic. Although Renault contract car is far from our bestselling line, it does have its following and that is because they look great, in particular the Megane that turns heads wherever it goes.

As from February 2012 Renault models will be sold with a four year warranty and roadside assistance, up to 100,000 miles, and an attractive servicing package. We feel this is going to increase the number of clients looking to lease a Renault , because there are clients who want a four year contract hire term but don’t want to have the vehicle without warranty cover in the last year.

Warranties in general are getting longer, as they quite rightly should; if a car goes wrong in its fourth year why should the purchaser, having laid out a substantial capital sum in order to purchase the car, have to spend their own money getting it repaired? This is particularly important now that cars are far more reliable mechanically but are becoming increasingly complicated electronically; electronic faults can be extremely difficult to cure.

We hope this change of strategy is going to have a positive impact on our Renault leasing sales. 

You can lease a Volkswagen Polo, for just £171 plus Vat per month, it can be found on our special offers page. Apart from looking great the Polo is very cheap to run; it has a combined fuel cycle of 51.4 mpg and it offers the best quality available, for this size of vehicle.

It’s an ideal family car because it is solid and safe; it has a five star rating from Euro NCAP. Everybody, but in particular those with children, should check the safety rating of the vehicle they are considering. Overall Volkswagen Polo leasing offers excellent value for money and this car is as popular today as it was when it first came out in the 1970’s.

Nobody quite knows, if the Euro were to fail, exactly what course it may take and what the consequences will be. Most economists feel that it would be pretty chaotic and the consequences pretty dire for economies all over the world. As Europe is our main trading partner nearly all businesses in the UK will be affected to some degree by a Euro collapse, just at a time when many companies are at their weakest.

If the Euro does fail and the European countries revert to their own currency we were wondering what affect it will have on the choices our clients make. For example at the moment Audi contract hire is our bestselling line. However many feel that under these circumstances the value of the German currency would soar, making imports from Germany considerably more expensive.

Our second most popular line is BMW leasing followed by Volkswagen, both German manufacturers. Does this mean that people would opt for vehicles manufactured in countries where the currency is weaker instead of choosing BMW? Probably not but it would certainly give an advantage to some of those other European countries. It would inevitably make it more difficult for German manufacturers to sell their cars around the world, particularly to Southern European countries where the currency is likely to be very weak indeed.

The late Professor Sir Alan Walters who was economic adviser to Margaret Thatcher said right from the outset that the Euro would not succeed; he said he didn’t know when but he knew that it would fail; many treated his remarks with derision at the time. We will have to wait and see what happens but even if a strong Deutsche Mark does return we are not expecting many clients to forgo their Mercedes contract hire car for a Perodua .

 The government is putting pressure on local governments to reveal the sums they are raising from speed cameras and declare to what extent accidents have been reduced – or otherwise - in the areas where the cameras are sited. Some of the results have been interesting and have confirmed motorist’s suspicions.

In Humberside where they have eighty nine cameras, there had been no change in the accident rate in one fifth of the camera sites and at seventeen sites the number of accidents actually rose. It is little wonder that the public – and the government have recognised this – feel there is a war against the motorist.

In the Thames Valley region where they have forty four cameras, it has emerged that there was an increase in accidents at seven camera sites; it’s difficult to believe that the authorities were not aware of this and yet they kept them switched on and continued to fine motorists.

Even more unforgivable is a camera site in Aylesbury where there was a four fold increase in accidents. We now know that not only do some speed cameras cause accidents but also that a number of road safety experts believe that by concentrating on speed cameras the last government actually caused deaths, by neglecting other areas of road safety. The motorist is asked to respect the law but the law must also respect the motorist.

According to Professor John Wann, of the Department of Psychology, at the Royal Holloway University of London, 60 seconds is what is added to your journey time, if you drive for one mile through a residential area at 20 rather than 30 mph. Surely we could all spare 60 seconds? If doing so, will as Professor Wann claims, save children’s lives?

Every year 26 children die as pedestrians on Britain’s roads; additionally 1,620 are seriously injured, this is according to the latest figures produced by the Department for Transport. The research being carried out by Professor Wann, is providing an insight into why so many children are tragically killed and injured on our roads.

It is, Professor Wann says, related to low level visual detection mechanism, which means that even when children are paying close attention, it is difficult for them to detect a fast moving vehicle; the problem starts when a vehicle is moving at more than 25 mph. This creates the worst of both worlds; the car that a child is most likely to step out in front of is a fast moving car, which is also most likely to kill or injure them.

We have often written of the benefits of having 20 mph zones around schools and the routes where children walk to school, at least during school opening and closing hours. We did not have the benefit of Professor Wann’s research but it is common sense; just look at the difference in survival rates of children hit by cars travelling at 20 mph compared to 30 mph.

It is a good feeling when a child runs out in front of you and you can stop in time but if you cant and it results in the death of a child, it is something that will live with you for the rest of your life, all perhaps for the sake of 60 seconds added to your journey time. A child pedestrian is killed on our roads, on average every two weeks, how many weeks or months will we have to wait before the government takes action?