BSM And Corsa Switchback

I wrote recently about how BSM is dumping the Fiat 500 and returning to Vauxhall and Corsas as their tuition vehicles. Of course, the forums have been rife with speculation by the know-it-all BSM-haters.

These two snippets are from the BSM Instructor Academy. The earliest says:

NEW CAR DEAL WITH VAUXHALL

We are absolutely delighted to announce a huge new partnership with another iconic British motoring giant… We are rekindling our a previous 18-year relationship with Vauxhall as of next March, with our fleet of Fiat 500s and Grande Punto’s being replaced with 5 door Vauxhall Corsas from the award winning ecoFLEX range.

The fleet will be changed to Vauxhall by the end of 2011.

Dating right back to 2009 when we first acquired BSM. There was no car deal in place for BSM at that time. Vauxhall and Aviva had parted ways and we needed to get cars to our instructors – clearly a vulnerable position for a driving school to be in! We secured for our Instructors the Car of the Year, the Fiat 500. We worked with our instructors and learners through surveys and by monitoring communications closely to understand instructor’s feelings about the Fiat 500.

In May of this year, instructors sent us a clear message saying that 80% of them wanted to drive the Vauxhall Corsa – we can’t ignore that overwhelming strength of opinion. The Corsa is the instructors car of choice, so we’ve set about delivering to you the car you wanted. Here are some other essentials that you required and we’ve made sure that we deliver…

  • Full size spare tyres
  • Steel Wheels instead of Alloys
  • Larger dials on the dashboard so you can see the speed
  • Rear headrests
  • Upgraded power steering
  • Better fuel consumption
  • And all cars will have 5 doors
  • 5 star NCAP safety rating

We are market leaders and it’s important to us that our offer to Instructors is head and shoulders above our competition.

So we’re back to British, and we can’t pretend we’re not delighted to be backing British industry once more. We must say a huge thank you to Fiat for an enormously successful 18 month relationship, which came along at the right time.

Looking forward, this is fantastic news for us, for our learners, for our instructors and for our economy. The fact remains though that this would all mean nothing if we didn’t have the colleagues at BSM to help us maintain our reputation as the UK’s biggest and best driving school. And without that reputation we wouldn’t have this deal. So it’s down to our instructors and colleagues – to you! So thanks for the continued hard work, and here’s to and exciting year ahead.

And then a more recent one:

Switching to Vauxhall – Follow Up

The newspaper coverage of our move to Vauxhall has said that we ‘ditched’ Fiat because the cars were too small and been caused an issue with the DSA but this not true.

We have in fact spoken to DSA this morning, and they assure us that the information in the newspaper didn’t come from. Furthermore, they have offered us this quote if we want to go back to the papers.

“The Fiat 500 meets DSA’s Minimum Test Vehicle requirements. DSA has confirmed to us again today that the Fiat 500 remains suitable for driving lessons, check tests and driving tests, and that the agency was in no way involved in BSM’s decision”

To reiterate our reasons for the switch, we have listened to instructor feedback about the Fiat 500, and we have managed to come to an excellent arrangement with Vauxhall that not only makes good commercial sense and gives our instructors what they want, but which also factors in a number of instructor specific improvements:

  • Full size spare tyres
  • Steel Wheels instead of Alloys
  • Larger dials on the dashboard so you can see the speed
  • Rear headrests
  • Upgraded power steering
  • Better fuel consumption
  • And all cars will have 5 doors

Of course, this won’t stop the “experts” giving out misleading information, but at least the facts are there for anyone who cared about such trivia.

EDIT 28/6/2012: Remember that BSM is now run by The AA.

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