The newly-renamed Driveway Vehicle Solutions is looking to build on its car dealer heritage, according to its managing director.
The fleet and leasing business formerly known as Pendragon Vehicle Management announced last week that it was rebranding with immediate effect.
Driveway Vehicle Solutions is part of Lithia UK, which also has a retail network that includes 170 Evans Halshaw and Stratstone dealerships, and sits under US parent company Lithia and Driveway.
Phil Wilbraham, managing director of Driveway Vehicle Solutions, tells Automotive Management that the link with the dealers is an important benefit that the business can offer its customers.
He says: “I think historically, there were times where we might have all tried to hide that and all operated a little bit independently. We’ve really come together as a business, and we really support each other.
“We really leant into, where we’ve got customers that are close to our sites, we make sure that they’ve got relationships with them.
“For other customers, it also helps with things like stock availability for us. We can get our hands on stock really, really quickly, we can get deliveries out to customers quickly.
“That heritage in retail also means when we’re talking to consumer customers, it’s not just kind of a process for us. That retail is in our DNA. So being able to give them a good customer journey, making sure that we’re kind of prepped for a good handover for them, where possible we try and use our sites for that. But it’s all about trying to use what a customer wants, to meet the customer where they want to be met.”
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Rebranding ‘culmination’ of improvements
Wilbraham, who says that there are no plans to extend Driveway branding to any of the dealers, became MD in 2024, following Lithia and Driveway’s takeover of the former Pendragon group earlier that year.
When asked about the reasons for the rebranding, Wilbraham says: “I think for me, it’s to reflect the journey we’ve been on over the last 18 months. When I came in, we’d declined for a few years on the bounce, and we wanted to really unlock the potential of the fleet business within the wider UK retail network as well.
“What we’ve done is effectively just really, really focus on customer experience and customer journey and a lot of investment into that. And so this is almost the culmination of that, that we’ve been putting all those building blocks in place, and then this is the final bit of that switch to Driveway Vehicle Solutions.
“It’s also leaning into the Lithia and Driveway heritage of the wider US parent, and also that UK retailer network for us.”
Wilbraham expects existing Pendragon customers to see the rebranding as the continuation of a theme of improvement, rather than an abrupt shift, noting achievements such as an improvement in the business’s Trustpilot rating from 1.3 to 4.2, and 14% fleet growth in 2025.
He says: “The existing customers have been feeling that and seeing that. I think the name change for us is … a little bit of a call to action for customers that maybe knew us previously, and knew the old Pendragon, and what that all meant, and if they had any engagement with that, or just had a perception of that in the market, this really allows us to point to all of those successes over the last 18 months, and hopefully reengage with either customers that have gone with other people over the years. or haven’t even used us before, but want to have a look at an alternative leasing provider to what they’ve got at the minute.”
Fleet growth planned – but not at any cost
Driveway Vehicle Solutions currently has more than 12,000 vehicles on its fleet, but Wilbraham’s aspiration is to grow this significantly. However, he says this must not come at the expense of customer service.
He says: “If you offered me now 30% fleet growth, but we delivered a bad customer experience, I would turn it down, because, actually, what’s long-term sustainable for us is delivering it through that real customer journey.
“We want to make sure that we can scale in a way that we’re still delivering … a really good experience, whether you’re a commercial vehicle customer, whether you’re a private consumer, or whether you’re a fleet customer.”
Wilbraham says that the aim is for a fleet of more than 20,000 vehicles, but that there is not a strict timeline on this, owing to the need to ensure the growth is sustainable.
Discussing the reasons for wanting to grow the fleet, he highlights how leasing providers having more than 20,000 vehicles can make a difference in terms of how their size and scale is perceived.
He continues: “We’re in a bit of an odd position, because we’re under 20,000 vehicles, but when you think about Lithia and Driveway, in totality, across the globe, we sold over 700,000 vehicles last year.
“So, sometimes people might perceive us, because of where we are in the rankings, as a smaller leasing company, but we’re part of such a big organisation, such a big infrastructure that we can lean on to support delivering it all.
“So that’s really, really valuable to us … so that people recognise the size and scale that we’ve got across the UK, but also across the globe.”
Salary sacrifice ‘demonstrates customer focus’
A significant development for Driveway Vehicle Solutions in 2025 was the launch of a new salary sacrifice service. According to Wilbraham, this was designed based on lessons drawn from mistakes made with its predecessor – salary sacrifice having first been launched by the business in 2010.
Wilbraham says: “The original scheme hadn’t been successful, because we hadn’t thought about that customer experience and that customer journey. And so, when we launched it last year, what did we do? We went back to basics – what does the customer want?
“It’s things like, the first version of it, if you ordered an electric vehicle, it didn’t come with a charger. They’d have to do that separately. That’s not a great experience.
“Bundling that in so the customer is getting a ‘just add electric’ car, you’re taking away a lot of the stress, a lot of the strain, so it’s fully maintained, fully insured, with the charger included. You’re making it really easy for the customer to make the switch.”
Wilbraham is determined for Driveway Vehicle Solutions’ reputation under its new name to be built on customer service.
“We want to grow through customer experience, and we’ll keep talking about that, and we’ll keep putting that at the heart of what we do.”