LATEST car sales figures have revealed three shining stars of the fleet market.

Out of the list of top 10 manufacturers only Vauxhall, Volkswagen and Toyota have increased their year to date sales to fleets. Vauxhall's are up by more than 7%, Volkswagen's by more than 2% and Toyota's up by 3%.

As reported on Fleet NewsNet last week, the company car market is heading for another million-selling year, its seventh in succession. Last year, the market hit an all-time record of 1,090,398 sales.

Latest figures show the Ford Focus continues to be the best-selling fleet model, notching up sales of 58,719 units for the year to date, the Vauxhall Astra is second with 45,816 sales and the Vauxhall Corsa is in third place, with 41,363 sales.

In terms of manufacturers, Vauxhall currently holds the fleet top spot with year to date sales of 142,205 vehicles, Ford is second with 136,904 sales and Renault third with sales of 60,438.

By the end of August, fleet sales had reached 674,912 units, a small fall of 1.7%, while business car sales (sub-25 fleets) increased by 6.6% to 155,087. Combined, the two markets account for 50.8% of the new car market.

Fleet diesel sales for the year to date were up by 7.25%, 213,461 units this year against 199,039 in 2002. Diesel sales accounted for more than 31% of fleet sales. The top five best-selling fleet diesel models so far this year are the Ford Mondeo (15,078 units), Ford Focus (14,827), Volkswagen Passat (13,272), Vauxhall Vectra (11,655) and Volkswagen Golf (11,347).

For August, diesel sales again accounted for more than 31% of the total market, totalling 12,900 units. Fleet News also reported last week that private car sales for the year to date are up 0.6% at 803,586, leaving the total car market up 0.2% at 1,633,585.