“I’m charged with our used vehicle performance as well as fleet and, unless you control the amount of rental with buy-back that you do, you’ve got a lot of vehicles coming back in six to nine months and you don’t have a natural home for them because the dealer network will have a limit as to how much under one-year-old product it can take.

“And what you don’t put through the network ends up going to external traders.

"Usually because of that they demand better pricing, that filters through to the guides and you see your residual values being undermined from your rental activity.

“Managing the RV is something we’ve been conscious of the last two to three years and we’ve seen some success  with new products we’ve brought to market.

“We’re here for the long game, not just to make short-term gains, which rental could be unless you manage it properly.”

Hamill is forecasting rental to increase to 4,100 cars next year but this is still in-line with its self-imposed 5% cap as it is launching new cars and anticipates higher sales.

Motability has fallen from 41% of Citroën’s fleet sales in 2011 to 33% last year.

“We’re achieving a more balanced mix through all of our sales channels,” says Hamill. “That means vehicles come back
to market in a structured fashion and gives our network a nice spread of different profile vehicles.”

SME sales “continue to be a real success story”, he adds. “Three years ago our business centre network was focused on selling commercial vehicles and less on selling cars.”

“About two-and-a-half years ago we changed that mindset and challenged them to consider the opportunity around selling cars to their local business community. We’ve had some real success on that front.”

Another four dealerships have been added to the business centre network, bringing the total to 82.

The DS line continues to attract new company car drivers with some switching from German brands.

“Many user-choosers like to have a degree of stand-out,” says Hamill.

“They don’t want to be exactly the same as everyone else and maybe they’ve had two or three German cars on the bounce. There comes a time where people will consider a change.”

The DS3 is particularly popular with salary sacrifice drivers. “When you have vehicle that looks as it does with the CO2 benefits it’s got, it tends to work in salary sacrifice,” Hamill says.

Citroën has grown its salary sacrifice sales volumes year-on-year as it has “a product portfolio that suits it”, i.e. smaller cars with low CO2.