NEW van warranties up to 150,000 miles are the latest development in the battle for sales advantage among manufacturers – and used values are set to benefit.

But it means fleets must redouble their efforts to keep vehicle paperwork in order to protect residual values, according to CAP Red Book senior editor, David Hill.

He said: 'Dramatic extension of warranties is an alternative way of winning retail favour to the traditional discount culture in the van market.'

Citing LDV's four years/150,000 miles and Mercedes' three years/unlimited mileage offerings as strong examples of the trend, he added: 'What interests us is the impact of these new warranties on residual values. Now is the time to be aware of this because some early examples are about to start filtering into the market in the form of early terminations and finance repossessions.

'Interestingly, we have so far observed these failing to achieve any kind of premium but that is purely down to ignorance because you can't tell by looking at a van how well covered it is.'

He added that when word spread, attitudes would change.

'For disposers and buyers it is absolutely vital that service history paperwork is therefore maintained properly so that the cover is not invalidated and the whole point of the exercise lost. We will never apologise for repeating this because some disposers in the van market do tend to have a patchy track record on these kind of housekeeping issues.'