NOTE: THIS IS AN OLD STORY FROM 2009 AND 2010 – IT HAS NO RELEVANC E IN 2013 AND ONWARDS…
I haven’t found an official announcement yet (I have now – see the edit at the bottom of this article), but on this forum a BSM instructor is saying that their cars are changing to FIAT 500s.
So, all the doom-and-gloom halfwits were wrong (as usual). BSM is still going to survive, and it will be with FIAT 500s instead of Corsas and Astras. Good luck to all BSM instructors.
The only people still mouthing off are the usual morons who think they know it all. Seeing as a lot of instructors teach in Yaris and other cars which you’d expect to see parked outside an Old Folks’ Home, they can’t really shoot their mouths off too much about FIATs, can they?
If I find anything else about this I’ll add it to this post.
EDIT 23/07/2009 #1 – I didn’t know FIAT were in the frame for the BSM contract, but whilst doing a bit of scouting I found this from May. FIAT is offering free dual controls on cars to instructors in a bid to increase their use as school cars. It isn’t directly connected with the BSM deal (which I haven’t seen officially announced yet), but it does tie in if it is true about the deal.
I must admit that the 500 does look a bit small, even though it is a nice car otherwise. But you have to face facts: a Corsa wasn’t exactly big, and no one complained about those. I’m sure there will be plenty of complainers.
I’m not sure if the car FIAT will be supplying is a 3- or 5-door, but either way it raises some interesting questions about the proposed requirement for all ADIs to sit in on candidate tests. It is likely to be a tight squeeze in most cars for many ADIs, but a small car like the 500 just doesn’t seem to be designed for an ADI (and possibly the examiner’s superior doing an assessment) sitting in back during a test. Maybe the DSA will see sense and change its plans for this to be a requirement of all tests…
EDIT 23/07/2009 #2 – The BSM Instructor Academy site refers to the 500 and Grande Punto, and that they will be discussing the launch this evening (23/07). Maybe it isn’t just the 500 ADIs will get. More information as it becomes available.
EDIT: 24/07/2009 – I notice that the BSM site has taken off the announcement of the launch it was doing yesterday (which makes sense as it is no longer going to happen, as it has happened), and still there is no official news that I can find.
EDIT: 27/07/2009 – I found some more references on the FIAT Forum here. From what people are saying the car that will be issued has no air-conditioning, and will be the basic 1.2L model. Longer-serving instructors will get the ‘sport’ edition (I’m guessing this will have aircon).
As usual on a web forum, there are the usual crop of ‘experts’ telling you how bad the cars are. I noticed elsewhere someone questioning the ‘reliability’ of these because he’d heard a single story of a clutch going after 12,000 miles. I guess he conveniently forgot (or didn’t see) the raft of stories over the years about Corsas and other cars’ clutches sometimes going after 9,000 miles. It happens and is not an indictment of the car. No one will sell a car which has a clutch that fails after 12,000 miles on every one sold!
It’s a car, for Heaven’s sake. The only issues I can see are no aircon and its size. But lets not forget the huge number of ADIs who don’t use the aircon anyway (because it costs money, though there’s usually some other reason given), and the fact that only the largest of ADIs won’t fit in the 500.
EDIT 28/07/2009 #1 – At last we have something official. This is from The Times.
Apparently, FIAT will supply 14,000 cars over 4 years – although it doesn’t say if BSM will be paying for them or not (the Vauxhall ones were free, and it appears that Vauxhall trying to charge was a main cause of the breakdown of the original arrangement). BSM franchisees can expect to start seeing their new cars within 3 weeks – again, it isn’t clear if the roll out is as the existing car lease expires or an en masse replacement to get rid of the Vauxhall stock as soon as possible.
On the basis of new drivers tending to buy the model of car they learnt in, FIAT is offering a discount on new cars of £500 to those who trained with BSM.
It’s interesting that some of the comments on the forums were that it was ‘a girlie car’. According to the Times story 60% of BSM’s pupils are female.
The story also suggests that the new deal will result in a significant loss of market share for Vauxhall, which is already experiencing difficulties.
I think there are still some details which BSM franchisees will be interested in missing from that story, but at least it gets things out into the open.
EDIT 28/07/2009 #2 – And there are now further news sources picking up on the story…
BusinessCar, AMOnline, Sky… in fact, take a look at Congoo for dozens of news stories. But remember that you read it here first. Several days before, in fact.
EDIT 13/10/2010: And BSM scraps the FIAT deal to return to Vauxhall after one year!