I HAD dinner with Peugeot’s new fleet director last night, along with plenty of my fellow hacks.

It was an opportunity for Martin Gurney to introduce himself – he replaces the promoted Phil Robson.

And he’s stepped into the job at a good time: there’s plenty of new Peugeot product coming through and the market is buoyant.

What’s more, he feels the Peugeot brand is making the sort of progress he wants to see against the company’s benchmark: Volkswagen. “Our residual values were 12%  behind Volkswagen; now we’re only 4% behind,” Martin explained.

Looking further forward, Martin said there were three strands to his fleet policy.

“The first is to make the most of the Peugeot 308 – it’s a car that’s really changing the perception of Peugeot. So we need to get it in front of more people.

“Second, we need to maintain and develop our residual values by continuing to talk to the leasing companies where we can positively influence how they set residual values.