Following a plus of 25.5% in August, the Italian True Fleet Market was down by 33.8% over September. Despite this quite negative outcome, the cumulated growth for True Fleet is still in the black after the first nine months of the year (+ 4.0%). The other market segments followed fleet’s downward movement in September with − 14.1% for the Private Market and − 37.2% for Special Channels. This meant the Total Market finished at 136,000 passenger car registrations (− 23.7%), and while this was a rather large drop for September due to the WLTP implementation it was still far away from being a new negative record for the Italian market, unlike in other European countries.
Brand performance
The majority of the top 10 manufacturers felt the effects of the tumble. Despite a huge loss in volume, Fiat maintained its pole position in the True Fleet Market. They were followed by Mercedes which benefitted from larger losses of other OEMs and jumped from 6th to 2nd position. Prior year’s number 9 contender Peugeot increased its fleet registrations by 15.0% and jumped into 3rd due to the SUVs 3008 and 5008 and the compact 308, taking the 2nd position in fleet’s Compact Car ranking.
BMW, VW and Ford finished on ranks 4 to 6 while Toyota (7th) only missed a better position by 35 registrations. The brand from Japan was the shining star within fleet’s top 10 (+ 35.2%) mainly due to the Hybrid versions of the Yaris, C-HR and – to a lesser extent – the Auris Touring Sports.
Followed by Renault (9th) and Nissan (10th), Škoda in 8th was another brand managing to post some healthy growth over September (+ 18.2%). The Czech manufacturer’s positive numbers were mainly fuelled by the performance of the new Karoq while the Octavia, being True Fleet’s No. 1 Compact Car model, stabilized Škoda’s volume. When widening the perspective to the top 25, two more highlights can be found: Volvo (16th) was up by 37.5% due to the V40, XC40 and XC60 while Jaguar (21st) managed to double its registrations (+ 104.8%) with the E-Pace taking the largest share of the growth pie.
Vehicle segments
Due to the WLTP frictions, almost all vehicle segments achieved a negative outcome over September with the Luxury Class being the only one eking out positively and posting a plus of 15.2% within the True Fleet segment but volume-wise this growth was rather marginal. Nonetheless, some segments are still in the black from a YTD (year-to-date) perspective, namely the SUVs and the Small Cars being at a cumulated plus of 31.2% and 3.7% in September while the cumulated increase of the Sports Cars (+ 19.2%) is rather insignificant in terms of absolute volume growth.
