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MOT test changes are coming. Of course this won’t affect those hugely sensible people that lease their cars from me but will affect those that still like to drive cars beyond their three year old birthday. If you are one of my clients then now would be a good time to make that cup of  Earl Grey and crack open the Hob Nobs, for those that may have a car that is MOT’d the changes probably won’t affect you anyway unless Read more »

New legislation is to be introduced in 2011 regarding the eyesight of drivers. The legislation was passed in 2006 and is set to come into force by member countries in 2011. It is expected that the new legislation will lead to earlier detection of cataracts, glaucoma and other disorders as well as prevent accidents. The Federation of Manufacturing Opticians (FMO) explained that drivers will have to get their eyes tested every Read more »

GE Capital Solutions Fleet Services has suggested that we could reduce our running costs by up to 10%. They suggest that better fuel management could reduce fuel cost, extend service intervals on some cars and reduce tyre wear. Move away more gradually from traffic lights, turn the engine off in traffic jams and drop your speed to the legal limits would have some dramatic affects. Check tyre pressures Read more »

In an effort to reduce car usage, the Government and indeed all parties led by the Greens tried to encourage more people to work from home. Whilst there was a small increase at the time latest statistics show that the number of employees working from home has stalled since 2002. Just 3% of workers work from home although 7% do so at least once a week. These results were recently reported in the 2008 National Read more »

 If you use your own car for company business or you allow employees to drive their own cars for business use Active Risk Management feel they have a solution to checking if employees are totally road legal in their own cars by providing an ongoing audit service. Employees will be issued with an online permit which will confirm whether they are eligible to drive on company business. The record will show whether the Read more »

Things are looking a bit bleak in the motor trade over here but in the US they suffered a drop of 37.1% of new car sales last month over January 2008. However, whilst their sales are dramatically down to the levels of 1992 the sales have been steady for the last 4 months which has drawn the conclusion from the various experts and manufacturers across the pond that sales have bottomed out and are set to rise as we Read more »

Tyres are on the move! Increasing in cost that is. The sudden jump in the cost of crude oil last year followed by the drop in value of sterling resulted in a continued increase in the cost of the raw materials that are used to manufacture tyres. This has meant that prices increased by 20% over recent months with the industry warning that prices will rise even further during 2009. Kwik Fit Fleet say they are expecting some Read more »

If you are still one of those that likes to own a car but is worried by the loss in depreciation – if you are then don’t buy a Maybach 62 which is reported by trade valuers Parkers to have lost £128,899 during 2008. However, downsizing and demand for city cars has kept used prices of smaller cars high producing the lowest cash losses in 2008. You should therefore ditch the Maybach, Bentley or Aston and replace with one of the following: Read more »

Fraud and forgery crime increased by 16% in the 3^rd quarter of last year blamed on the credit crunch. Attention has been drawn towards brokers that arrange mortgages and finance as some of the main culprits helped along by the increasing acceptance of the Internet. As I recently reported things are getting tough for most of us involved in the finance industry and as happened in the last recession desperation Read more »

My advice when applying for finance is make sure you check your credit file and sort out any errors. If you went through a difficult patch, divorce, redundancy, death in the family etc. and things are fine now make sure that you put that information on your credit file (as explained in my book ‘An Insider Guide To Car Finance’) by entering a Notice of Correction, this also applies if you think that an error has Read more »