Keith Michaels, Vauxhall head of marketing operations, oversees the FA partnership with his programmes and promotions team.

“The sponsorship deal includes the value on the running costs of each car,” Michaels says.

“We profiled all the drivers, looked at their mileages and agreed an average value per car in cash terms based on the open market over the period of the agreement. We reduced the sponsorship by that figure.

“Both sides agreed to accept the risk that residual values can go up or down and preferred this approach from a budgeting angle.”

The mileage figures vary considerably. Regional coaches travel huge distances and rack up the mileages in a short space of time. Their cars can be replaced every three months.

Other staff are largely office-based and will retain the car for the duration of the operating cycle, which is set at 11 months or 20,000 miles, whichever comes first. The average length of contract is nine months.

Vauxhall replaced Fiat as the FA’s sole supplier when the original sponsorship contract was agreed in January 2011.

At that point, the association had no formal programme in place to manage its fleet and was open to a suggestion from Vauxhall to take on the operational responsibilities.

“We put in disciplines but they were causing drivers dissatisfaction because they were ordering cars and having to wait too long,” Michaels says. “So we cloned our Vauxhall staff car scheme using the same software that we use to manage our fleet.”

Drivers now order cars online, viewing only those models available to their grade.

As long as they regularly go into the system to update their mileage, an alert is sent out when it is time for them to change, together with their choices. This ensures a smooth transfer from de-fleet to new car.

Vauxhall decides which cars will be offered to FA staff at any one time, allowing it to flex model volumes depending on residuals strength and availability. All cars come with Bluetooth, sat-nav and parking sensors as standard – part of the FA’s risk management policy.

“Our guys who do our remarketing decide which cars to put on to the fleet based on their knowledge of what will get the best returns in the used market,” Michaels says.

“Most of the cars are Astra and Insignia but we also offer Corsa, Antara, Meriva and Zafira Tourer. We are also about to add the Mokka, depending on availability.

They are almost all diesel although we have some petrol cars for staff doing lower mileage.”

In addition to the standard company car fleet, Vauxhall also supplies cars to its FA ‘brand ambassadors’.

They include England coach Gary Neville, and players Phil Jagielka and Glen Johnson who each have the range-extender Ampera.