Featured in BusinessCar 25 July, 2007
Six months into the year and Ford continues to dominate both the list of best-selling fleet makers and cars. However, look down a little and you’ll see that every Audi model is on the march, writes Paul Barker
The status quo has been maintained at the top of the overall sales chart in the first half of 2007 as far business car registrations are concerned, but there has been a switch in leadership of the premium brand sector.
The first half of this year has seen a 2.8% rise in like-for-like fleet registrations, to a total of 617,286 units. Overall, new car registrations are running at 2.0%?up for the first six months of the year, and fleet is once again outperforming retail (which is up 1.4%).
Ford again tops the list of fleet car makers, enjoying an advantage of more than 5500 registrations over arch rival Vauxhall. The rest of the top five mirrors the hierarchy at the end of 2006 – VW, Peugeot and Renault in that order. VW, however, has had a good first half of the year to put some distance between itself and its rivals, while both French brands are down on 2006 to leave them peering nervously over their shoulders at Audi, which has seen amazing growth so far this year. A 37.5% increase in sales compared with the first six months of 2006 has seen it overhaul both Toyota and, more satisfyingly for the German premium brand, BMW, which has surprisingly suffered a 10.4% reduction in registrations.
Audi’s success has also seen the A4 outsell the BMW 3-series to become fleet’s top compact exec model, taking it to the verge of the overall fleet top 10, while the A6 has passed the 5-series to become the top-selling fleet executive model (see table page 17). Every Audi is up year-on-year, with the Q7 coming from a standing start this year to be the second best-selling large 4×4 behind the Land Rover Discovery. BMW meanwhile has suffered from a slow build-up after the new X5 was launched a couple of months ago, while the X3 has disappeared completely, dropping from position 65 at the close of 2006 to now rank 118 in the top sellers list thanks to a 66.1% fall in registrations.
New Kia boss Paul Philpott has been true to his word and pulled the Korean brand out of the low-profit fleet business. A drop of four places to 20th in our chart of business car brands due to a 41.8% plunge is evidence of that, with the baby Picanto the obvious fall guy, falling outside the top 100 from its place just inside the top 50 at the end of last year. The good news, though, is that the new Ceed lower medium hatchback has already broken into the top 100 (at 97).
Nissan’s recovery after a couple of years with little attractive product seems to be well underway. The Note has passed the Vauxhall Meriva to lead the supermini-MPV category (though how much of that was Mobility business is open to question) while the Qashqai is also selling well, and is comfortably inside the top 50 despite only being launched this spring.
Among the top 100 models the Focus, Astra, Fiesta and Mondeo lock out the top four once again, with Peugeot’s new 207 being the only car outside of Ford, Vauxhall and VW to make the top 10.
Further down, Citroen’s C4 has had an eyebrow-raisingly good half-year for a car approaching middle age, while newcomers such as the Ford S-max and Toyota Auris have joined the 207 in establishing themselves in the top 50.
Diesel sales
Fleet diesel registrations are up 7.3% in the first six months of the year, and have accounted for 46.0% of new fleet cars, two percentage points up at the same time in 2006. Audi’s good run is, unsurprisingly, mirrored in the diesel chart (right), grabbing fourth place above BMW and Peugeot, while Renault slipped behind Toyota to eighth and Nissan comes into the top 20 at the expense of ChryslerJeep.
Of all the market segments (left), the lower medium sector is again the dominant one, accounting for 28.7% of fleet registrations. The upper medium sector was down 3.6% in the first half of 2007 and its market share dropped 1.4% to 20.8%, at least in part due to the Mondeo, the biggest player in the segment, being in changeover from old to new. Superminis and Mini-MPVs come next, with supermini-MPVs grabbing fifth place from small 4×4s thanks almost entirely to the popularity of Nissan’s new Note.
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