FLEET sales surprisingly increased 2.7% year on year to 88,049 last month, taking the total for the first six months of 1999 to 545,631 - 2.1% behind last year's halfway figure of 557,358. Ford led the fleet chart despite a 4.2% year-on-year drop in sales and, in Focus, it had the top-selling fleet model with 5,849 sales. Ford's total fleet sales are fractionally down after six months against last year.

Vauxhall's fleet sales increased 26.6% year on year last month to 15,987 with the Vectra narrowly outselling the Ford Mondeo, which saw sales drop year-on-year by more than a quarter. Peugeot recovered some of the ground it lost in the first five months to Renault as fleet sales rose 15.2%, while Honda and BMW made rare appearances in the top 10 fleet best-selling manufacturers list at the expense of Citroen and Toyota.

Volkswagen fleet sales again rose dramatically year on year at 6,175 units with business for the half-year up 65.4% but Rover saw fleet sales tumble by almost 60% in June as market share for the first six months of 1999 dropped to almost 4% with sales of 22,783.