He expects all Fiat van salesmen and women to have an in-depth knowledge not only of the brand but also of the bigger issues affecting fleet buyers.

The company has set up a “Fiat Unetversity” at Slough, at Middlewich in Cheshire and in Edinburgh, so that dealers can send their sales people for expert tuition.

Fedrigo says: “This way we ensure that anyone who walks into any Fiat dealership in the country will be guaranteed to talk to someone who knows about all aspects of van fleet operation.”

Fiat’s improvement in servicing, maintenance and repairs is equally as important. The company already had a tie-in with its partner firm Iveco since 2007, so that fleets could get servicing and repairs done out of hours, but now has a new association with truck market leader DAF.

“After the demise of LDV, several DAF dealers called us and asked if we would be interested in using them for servicing and repairs on Fiat vehicles too,” says Fedrigo.

“As DAF is the truck market leader, this seemed to be a marriage made in heaven and we now have 33 dealers spread across the UK, with the aim of 40 in the near future.

“We have spread the Fiat, Iveco and DAF dealerships evenly across the country so, in the main, they don’t overlap.

"The great thing about getting vans repaired and serviced at a truck dealership is that generally they have a better speed of reaction to customers and of course some are open 24 hours a day, which means no downtime for fleets.

“We are now in the process of making sure that our Fiat dealers have this approach too. This really sets us apart from most of the other van dealers as they can’t offer such a service.”

As with most van manufacturers, Fiat shares its models with others. The Ducato, for example, is rebadged as a Citroën Relay and Peugeot Boxer, while the Doblo reappears as the Vauxhall Combo and the Fiorino also gets the monikers Citroën Nemo and Peugeot Bipper.

So does this hinder Fiat’s sales potential? Not at all, says Fedrigo.

“The fact that we sell our vehicles to others is an endorsement of our product. In the case of the Ducato, we have our own engines, which are more fuel-efficient and have longer service intervals and with our enhanced dealer network we have a better fleet story to tell.”

Looking to the future, Fedrigo is busy spreading the word about Fiat’s new niche vehicles such as the Doblo Work Up and XL and Fiorino, Scudo and Doblo crew vans.

One method of doing this is the tried-and-tested ‘bums on seats’ approach and extra demo vehicles are being supplied to dealers so they can offer extended tests to potential buyers.

Also in the front line is the new Ducato tipper, which offers the best payload of any tipper at 3.5 tonnes gvw along with Traction Plus, which gives four-wheel drive capabilities without the weight addition and maintenance issue of a true four-wheel drive system.

Fedrigo says: “We firmly believe that once fleet operators have tried our products, they will want to buy them.

“We have a fantastic range of vans and now with our dealers giving these extra services we don’t believe any other van manufacturer can match what Fiat has to offer.”

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