After a small siesta in Q1 the Spanish True Fleet market appears to be back to positive ways, though the YTD (year-to-date) is still riding in the red. The total market finished just shy of 132,000 registrations and while the Fleet and Dealer/Manufacturer channel were both positive, the Private Market (- 10.2%) and RAC (short term rental) market (- 11.2%) both drew double digit losses. True Fleet was up by 2.0% coming off the back of last months + 11.6% growth and the Dealership/Manufacturer channel registered a + 7.0%. Interestingly, Special Channels (the combination of Dealership/Manufacturer and RAC) were just 263 registrations above the result of YTD May 2018 showing perhaps a need to keep tactical channels balanced.
Brand performance
From a top 10 brand perspective there were more gainers than losers, but surprisingly only one new entry onto the ladder and only one OEM which retained its position. VW was once again top of the podium but both Peugeot and Toyota, ranked 2nd and 3rd respectively gave them a run for there money. Peugeot mostly thanks to the 3008 finished with a +12.5% in the growth stakes while Toyota had a host of models to thank with RAV4, C-HR, Aygo and Corolla (technically given the name plate change from Auris) all helping with the + 27.9%. This left them both just a couple of hundred registrations short of the top spot. Home grown brand SEAT was the biggest grower with + 41.9% securing them the 4th place with BMW, Renault, Audi, Ford and Mercedes all following in that order. Nissan was the new entry onto the top 10 ladder thanks to a + 9.3% and while not the most registered the Leaf contributed the most registrations in terms of volume gain up by a staggering 704.8% over May 2018.
Vehicle Segments
No prizes for guessing the growth segment with all SUVs classes (small, compact, medium and large) expanding and you would be hard pushed to find an OEM that doesn’t have an entry within one of these, but it was nice to see that now even Lamborghini managed 3 registrations in True Fleet thanks to the Urus. Passenger Cars’ Mini segment also had a healthy bump with a 26.5% upward surge, with the previously mentioned Toyota Aygo carrying most of that volume and not to be outdone even the Sportive segment had a good April thanks predominantly to the newly released BMW Z4 and Mercedes AMG GT 4 door.
