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.
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 | |||
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