It's been about 10 years since I had a company car allowance. We had the following choice:
1. Take a company Neon, gas card, and pay nothing out of pocket.
or
2. Be paid (taxable benefit) the maximum lease payment allowed by CCRA and get $0.35/km. That would be close to $0.60 in today's money. You had to pay for your own insurance, etc out of the per-km charge.
Most of my colleagues either leased a car at the max payment allowed under tax laws, or went higher. I was an odd duck as my Mercedes was less than the max and I used the difference for insurance, etc. and then the per-km went much further.
I also went weird and instead of the "$399 payment" that MB was running for the C230, I upped the payment and had them lower the residual (possible then, probably not now, as they don't seem to do stuff on an individual basis) and then at the end of the lease, I bought the car for well below the market value.
Overall, I paid surprisingly little for my car, even after the taxable benefits were claimed.
What most did: The max at that time was about $650-700 for the payment under CCRA, so that's what the company paid. They would lease a Navigator or other $$$ SUV for $1000 and pronounce how they were driving something so expensive for only $300 or so out of pocket.
I'm cheap.