I caught a bit of a cold the other way around once. I bought a second hand CL600 which had lost money like a rocket assisted stone for it's first owner and I used it for company travel. It was stunning. The interior was beautiful - Full alcantara and nappa leather interior. The turbo V12 was musical.
I collected our CEO at Heathrow. We went in the CL to a few customer meetings. As we drove off from LHR Bob (CEO) looked at the car and asked how I ran this using the company car policy. I could see the cogs whirring. Long explanations around it costing less than a well spec'd 520i
We then went on the underground to a customer in Canary Wharf where the annual car show was in place. We came out of the underground and there was a building we walked through that had a "UK Sports Car" group. Lotus, Noble and Morgan all had stands. As I walked past with Bob the sales person called out my name causing Bob to turn. We had a few minutes so I went over. At this point Bob asked how I knew them and I mentioned we owned "one a bit like that" and pointed at the Supersport as we had the S2 at the time.
He walks over and does what most people do when seeing one of those for the first time - gawp. Then he sees the display showing the price (we paid £40k for the S2 and it showed £140k for the S/Sport) and I remember to this day as he mouthed the words W.T.F. at me. He never swears. I excused myself from the Morgan peeps and aimed to deflect the brain fart that was about to occur. No. Too late.
So that was it, for the next six years the butt of every HR joke about company cars was the UK and me. Everytime I tried to get something decent through it was judged against the profligate levels and so we went in circles.
Yet everytime one of them came to the UK the first thing that happened was they asked me to collect them and they packed a small soft back instead of the usual massive carry-on.
The laugh is that the combined cost of both our cars was only slightly more than the Tesla he drives now. He is a good guy though. Just not a petrol head !
You have to laugh.
