The fleet sector continued its strong start to the year with sales up by nearly 5% in April compared to the same month last year.

Last month’s total new car market reached 170,163 units – a 4.3% increase on April 2006, and fleet contributed 86,068 sales.

So far this year, the new car market has reached 858,639 units, with fleet accounting for 48.1% of sales and business sales (fleets of 25 vehicles or fewer) accounting for 6.6%.

In fleet, Ford consolidated its position at number one with an 8.4% increase, helped by strong sales of the C-MAX and S-MAX people carriers – the latter recording 2,500 registrations so far in 2007 and building on its launch this time last year.

Elsewhere in the top 10, Volkswagen continued to grow with a 14.4% year-to-date increase. Much of this is down to strong demand for both petrol and diesel Golfs – the former helped by the introduction in the middle of last year of the TSI supercharger/turbocharger engine technology.

Petrol Golf sales were up 25%, while diesel versions grew by nearly 27% despite a strike at Volkswagen’s diesel plant in Germany earlier this year which limited supply.

But it is Audi which continues to set the pace – seeing fleet sales rise by nearly 37% year-to-date. Helping this was a massive 77% growth in A6 registrations (helped by a free sat-nav offer on 2.0-litre petrol and diesel models, the availability of Multitronic gearboxes on 2.0 and 2.7 TDIs and a heavy marketing push) and a 40% rise in A4 registrations – the latter aided by the introduction of the new 2.0 TDI engine with 170bhp.

Honda is back in the top 10 with Civic and Accord both selling strongly, up 36% and 59% respectively.

Rounding out the top 10 is Fiat with massive increases in sales of its Grande Punto model. Almost all of the model’s 6,600 registrations were of petrol-engined models.

  • Sales of LCVs up to 3.5 tonnes reached 25,524 units in April – up 10% on year-on-year. So far this year the market has totalled 112,793 units – up 2% year-on-year.

  • Top 10 fleet models

    Model YTD 2007 YTD 2006 % change
    Ford Focus 36,620 36,372 0.7
    Vauxhall Astra 29,513 27,526 7.2
    Ford Mondeo 16,303 14,471 12.6
    Ford Fiesta 16,124 14,861 8.4
    Volkswagen Golf 13,737 10,874 26.3
    Renault Megane 13,718 14,365 -4.5
    Vauxhall Corsa 13,220 15,223 -13.2
    Vauxhall Zafira 11,797 11,608 1.6
    Vauxhall Vectra 11,741 11,384 3.1
    Fiat G/Punto 6,600 2,991 220.6

  • Top 10 sellers