Company Car Billboard

We have two cars in the fleet for our estate agencies. One is a pool car fully liveried up and driven by all staff. The other is a 'company car' for a senior staff member. Different roles, different car different paint job.

Sometimes, perhaps often, discretion is required. It rather depends on what you do.

Reminds me of an incident many years ago. I'd recently hired a young sales rep who turned out be a bit of a cocky sort and needed taking back a peg or two. So, the next time he was in the office as part of a general chat I casually dropped it in to the conversation that by the way, he needed to pop into Halfords and get some roof bars for his company car.

Of course he asked why, and I told him that there was a new company policy that all the reps were from now to have a 6' long, internally illuminated, fibreglass signwritten shoe attached to the roof of their cars at all times. I tipped off the other more experienced guys that this was going to be mentioned to him, so they played along and pretended to reluctantly accept this and that the rumour was that they were all to report to head office the following week to have them fitted.

Kept him going with that for days. Of course it was nonsense.
😉

There's a bit of an 'officer class' divide, isn't there? My employer - like the previous one - has field engineers who travel in liveried vehicles and work in company-issued shirts. I don't, and never have; nor do any of my peers in the companies I work with and sell to. I'd probably feel slighted if anyone suggested I should.

It's not universal, though. I remember years ago a visit to Honda at Swindon, where all the managers who came to the meeting room wore matching white overalls. And an airline captain can wear a corporate uniform without anyone questioning her status.

At one company I worked for the company car hierarchy was very strict.

Field engineers got a 1.6L Cavalier Hatch
Area supervisors got a 1.6GL Cavalier Hatch
Tech Support got a Cavalier SRi Hatch
etc. etc.

All cars had to be white and have a sticker with the company logo in the rear window.

A young engineer joined our Birmingham office and took delivery of his new 1.6L. A few weeks later it was noticed that he'd spent a bundle of his own cash on tarting it up to look like an SRi. Spoilers, badges, paint job to lower bodywork and mirrors etc.

Management were not amused and made him pay the full cost of having it returned to standard by a bodyshop approved by the lease company.

The same engineer was later responsible for a memo to all company car drivers. Apparently he'd been driving like an idiot and someone had seen the company logo, taken his reg. number and made a complaint to our UK MD. Rumour was that the complainant was a customer.

Needless to say, our young engineer didn't last long.

I won't ask how you know that, Rob - cos you'd probably tell me. 😜

The 1991 Cavalier GL was about the last car to look aspirational in white till Audi launched the A5 in 2007. And possibly the last Vauxhall to look aspirational at all.