Daily has its sights on Transit
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The new Daily completes Iveco's CV line-up and pits it against the panel vans from the likes of VW, Mercedes, and importantly, Ford.
II by Toby Clark
With the launch of the new Daily, Iveco is keen to emphasise that it now offers a complete range of commercial vehicles. Sandy Mathieson, head of Iveco Ford's small vehicles business unit, says: "It's undoubtedly one of the most important events in the history of Iveco and Iveco Ford in the UK."
The new model puts Iveco squarely into the mainstream panel van market, in direct competition with LDV, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and the Sevel brands, including parent company Fiat.
But its main target is Ford's Transit, due to be replaced early next year—and
many of Iveco Fords sales outlets are also Ford dealers. So the new Daily will be badged as an Iveco (rather than an 'veep Ford) throughout the range, and the dealer network will grow: there are currently 57 Daily dealers, but Mathieson wants to extend this to 75 or more "in a very short space of time".
These dealers WU be selling Daily vans and chassis-cabs from under three tonnes up to 6.6 tonnes GVW. Though the market is tending to polarise towards 3.5-tonners, the 2.8-3.5-tonne sector is "too big to be ignored", says Mathieson. It's an opportunity that we will be grasping with both hands."
He claims that no other van manufacturer will be able to offer such a good service backup, and that the new 125hp "Untiet" common-rail diesel is the best engine on the market.
Focus
While vans have been the focus of UK sales, the Daily is the European market leader in chassis-cabs, and the emphasis will be on building sales of chassiscabs and crew-cabs in this country. To this end Iveco will offer a variety of factory-fitted or factoryapproved bodywork from the beginning of next year: San Marco dropside bod ies are already fitted on-line at the Valladolid factory; they will be joined by tippers and by UK-sourced GOP box vans and aluminium Luton vans.
The chassis-based Daily is "bodybuilder-friendly"; the next step will be to allow bodybuilders to sell vehicles directly. Box-bodied and van-based fridge vehicles are an obvious development, and Iveco will also offer a bespoke ambulance chassis with prepared electrical connections.
In theory more than 3,000 variants of the Daily are available, but lveco wants to simplify customer choice, and make its dealers' lives easier, by selecting "pivot models" to cover the main market areas and price points (see box below).
Ivaco knows that the Daily's residual values have not been impressive, and it will be attempting to move away from the fleet-led sales that built the Daily's initial market share.
"The focus will be away from the lower end of the rental business and towards blue-chip operators:. says Mathieson. Buyback deals will be limited to two years or more—he stresses there will be "no more 12-month or seven-month deals with the likes of TLS".