Afternoon Gentlemen,Demonstrators, ah, a very vexing subject, quite often a big capital outlay for either the Dealer, or Manufacturer, and if not managed correctly could well turn out to be a veritable disaster. First, know something about your potential customer, is he happy with what he is running? or does he have problems with the product, or its backup. Is the product that you are offering suitable for his operation? What are his priorities, payload, economy, ease of acquisition, residual value, length of ownership, multi driver suitability, or one man one vehicle, and a miriad of other more individual factors. A complex equation, and one so often ignored by sales staff in the field, anxious to place product with a “flagship” operator within their patch. Oh, the most important point, know your product, and most importantly its strengths, and its weakness. If it aint going to do the job, then do not put it in! Then, if you do put a demonstrator in, manage it, make certain that the driver, (and all the men who will drive it), can drive it to its best advantage. If the man working with it hates it, then you have wasted time and money to no avail. Manage the demo, monitor vital points, fuel consumption, is it performing as it should? if not, why not, find out, it wont get better by itself. Do the drivers deslike it? why, can something be done. It is amazing what you can learn with a bit of “out of hours” hospitality! And lastly, are you just being taken for a ride! It entails a lot more work than many were prepared to put in, and the negative results of many manufacturers demo budgets bears testiment to the lack of business expertise within the Commercial Vehicle industry. I remember in the 80s having operated a good number of 1628s, having a powerliner demo delivered one night, with no handover or EPS instruction, to go out the following day with one of our clients, what a lash up by Mercedes! Dennis, your picture of the TR305, first impression, poor presentation, factory yellow, primer chassis, who on earth put those rear wings on? If the Maxi Couple design had one real fault, (that it shared with the Big Cam ■■■■■■■■■ was that if you got to the top of the rev range, then she would ■■■■ fuel. I understand that the UK TRs had the standard axle ratio, and box. Now max economy would equate to circ 80/90kph, but UK motorway would be min100kph! End of economy! Bet you were getting circ 5mpg Dennis, when if the importer RT&B, had fitted the next option ratio you would have seen a min 8/9mpg. I remember having a conversation about this very fact, at a dinner in Lyon one night, with a senior marketing man from RT&B, but he did not agree with me, and was a little dismissive. Still, he was ex Leyland , so I expect really understood what was needed in the market place!! Yes the TR was a fat old girl, around 7tonnes ready to go. But not that heavy in relation to her competitors. Residual value, urghhh, the real problem for all new entrant, or small volume importers. All you can do is support the back end, (if you can afford so to do, and RVI, through its subsidiary RT&B, simply did not have loose resource so to do. And if you do, its a delicate balancing act, otherwise you end up with fields of rough unsaleable stock, and facing a massive capital right down.(now who immediately springs to mind)! Really all you can do is recognise that there is a low residual, so drop the front end price, so the actual cost of financial ownership is very competitive. But that takes us into another area, business management, that really is away from this core thread. In France, all my Dealer demos were fitted with fuel meters that would record actual, and culumative consumption, they were presented well so to drive one was a good experience, and the dealer salesman had plenty of “giveaways” for the company staff. We always involved after sales staff in the dealerships, so everyone tried to make a demonstration a success, and it often was. Ive gone on far too long, apologies, hey, some demos must have worked for RT&B, Ian Pollock ran some, Duncan Barbour, Harold Montgomery, Brains, Atkins, Browns of Ash, Aberlour Glenlivet, Baileys, John Yendle, for Johnson and Johnson, Not bad old lorries, Cheerio for now.
). The wine (not only will I drink nothing but French but never choose anything but Bordeaux or Bergerac, how chauvenistic is that 
), the food and the wagons.
