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413 – Car clubs continue to grow

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29 March 2010

GOOD to see the car club phenomenon making some headway.

Car clubs provide a useful way of accessing cars on a low cost basis – you pay for membership of the club but after that just pay for usage by the hour.

For city-based businesses it provides an ideal form of transport without having to commit to company cars. Cars can be booked online or over the phone for under £5 an hour. So it provides business mobility without the overheads.

Now comes news that City Car Club, which recently took over rival WhizzGo, has received £1.8m in new financing to expand its fleet of city car club cars.

The entrepreneur James Finlayson is the boss as well as the largest shareholder at City Car Club, and had this to say about the company and its announcement: “Our strategic acquisition of WhizzGo, combined with a 90% growth in membership over the course of the last 12 months, meant we needed additional funding to keep up with demand. We are looking to grow our 500 strong fleet to 750 into 2011 and increase membership from 16,000 to over 25,000.”

With City Car Club operating in London, Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, Brighton, Bristol and planning new operations in Cardiff and Glasgow the company will need all the new cars it can get.

But James remains bullish, pointing out that small businesses have contributed to the demand. “Demand has come from businesses wanting to reduce their transport costs as well as reducing their carbon footprint. Membership of a car club delivers on both fronts.”

Good luck to them. I think car clubs deserve to succeed: they provide low-cost business mobility, cut congestion and cut pollution.

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Ralph Morton

Ralph Morton

Ralph Morton is an award-winning journalist and the founder of Business Car Manager (now renamed Business Motoring). Ralph writes extensively about the car and van leasing industry as well as wider fleet and company car issues. A former editor of What Car?, Ralph is a vastly experienced writer and editor and has been writing about the automotive sector for over 35 years.

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