THE last time I met Peter Allibon his dress attire was somewhat different - well, so was mine, come to that.

Then, it was the Mazda London Triathlon and we were dressed in wetsuits ready for the swim leg in the London docks.

This time it was business attire at a restaurant for lunch - but being by the Thames we kept the water based link going.

Despite having met before we had only ever exchanged a few pleasantries so it was good to have time to catch up. Peter, by the way, is Mazda's fleet and remarketing director - so he looks after all the firm's business car sales.

One of the main points of conversation was the imminent launch of the Mazda small business initiative - see our news story Mazda gears up to help small businesses. Part of this will be providing Mazda Contract Hire (or the option of personal contract hire if you prefer that) to small business customers with anything from one to 50 cars.

I hope Mazda crack that. The company currently has good representation in the retail sector - adding some business background to that retail experience should put Mazda in a good position with small businesses.

And the other thing that makes me believe Mazda will be successful in this area is that the company understands that not every business wants to run cars on contract hire (quite often these 'made for small business' programmes just push contract hire). Sometimes it's better, or more convenient, to run it privately on a personal contract hire lease - and then claim back any business mileage using the AMAP 40p per mile tax-free allowance.

The other thing that Peter mentioned was how determined were user-chooser company car drivers to use up their monthly allowance - irrespective of the impact on benefit-in-kind company car tax.

"For example, if a driver has a monthly lease limit of £400 they will spend up to that amount," Peter told me. "Maybe the car will be £350 a month. But to that they will add extras to take it up there. It's been quite surprising really."

Peter also added that while company car choosers appreciated the simplicity of the Mazda offering - the cars are well-equipped without long lists of options - this had actually worked against them in cases where drivers were able to spec up their cars.

"I had an input on the revised Mazda 6 with the product planners," said Peter. "And one of the items I insisted we had was the option of full leather seating for those company car drivers looking to up-spec their next business car on the TS2 grade."

Inevitably the conversation turned to triathlons. But, like me, Peter is backing off this year. "My golf handicap really suffered last year - I need to put that right again!" said Peter.

It's something I've had to do, too. I love competing in triathlons. But the training can be very time-intensive. And among other things - like a bit of tlc for the house - I'd like to do a bit more sailing this year too.

And there's always 2011 to resume triathlon battle!

TAGS: Mazda, small business, AMAPs, Peter Allibon