Pictured above: Ben Coates

Over the past 6 months we have heard good news from many vehicle and automotive manufacturers, plenty of statements saying that production is up on this time last year, sales are improving, but let's be honest, if sales got any lower the industry would be dead.

So are we right to be proudly shouting about our industry coming back to life, are we correct in saying we are enjoying a mini boom, yes and no is the answer.

Currently we are comparing figures to last year when we were deep in the depth of the recession, the vehicle industry lost many jobs in this time, businesses lost millions of pounds, sales dropped dramatically on new cars, parts were not needed, so fast forward a year and it is easy to say we have sold more than last year, but the real question is, how far off sales and production figures are we from three years ago?

However after the battering the industry got and the way it was stripped, we all had to start somewhere, we had to recover somehow, there can be no doubt that we are only just getting off our knees, but we are not yet standing up proud, it is true that employment figures are increasing in the industry again, but no where near the levels of pre 2008.

But after three years of crying life's not fair, we needed to feed off these small successes, momentum has changed and we are going the right way at last, what we must do in the industry is take advantage of the good times, but expect the next rainy day when we need those profits to cover the shortfalls to be only around the corner, unfortunately the vehicle industry got greedy and entered into the boom and bust world the government led us into.

Athena Vehicles is a great example of how to beat the recession, Ben Coates, Sales Manager said "When I joined Athena my immediate question to the director was do you walk into a petrol garage and just buy petrol? Of course the answer was no, we buy papers, pop, crisps, etc, the money in the actual vehicle leasing market has been driven out by people trading from their bedrooms who don't have offices to run and therefore don't need to make huge margins, when you have your own building as we do with Athena House, the bills need to be paid, we had to come up with a way of building margins back into the business, so we introduced products and services that can be related back to the car or commercial vehicle."

"The easiest and most obvious product was maintenance, we brought a third party on board due to the inflated prices that manufacturers charge for their services, we then looked at ensuring the customers financials were protected in case of write off of the vehicle, this meant bringing on a product called Gap Insurance, this covers any missing monies between the valuation from the insurers and the finance house and can save customers thousands of pounds, it can be our most valuable product."

"After this we decided that one of the biggest issues in cars is mobile communications and Satellite Navigation systems, however with it being such a huge area we went a step further and purchased and built a complete new website along with our partners, this also enabled us to offer the contracts for mobiles too."

"Our next area is health and safety, we are due to launch an online fleet management system, this will enable fleet managers and human resource departments to ensure that all policies are followed, also after an unfortunate fault accident the system allows the driver to prove that he has improved his area of fault and this will also protect the company against corporate manslaughter."

What we are trying to do is to offer a complete one stop shop for everybody from the personal contract driver to the fleet manager with numerous vehicles in the pool of cars. In today's world protecting your assets if the key to future success and also avoids unwanted investigations.