April brought more tough times for the French true fleet market, being the fourth consecutive month with registration volumes below last year’s.

Renault recorded the highest number of fleet registrations.

The figures from Dataforce show the 9.0% decline led to a year-to-date result of -7.2%. The private market had a similar disappointing April with -8.1% but at least its YTD performance is (still) slightly positive with +0.2%.

Looking at the brand ranking within fleets, despite the weak market, Renault (in the lead and up +8.2%) and second-placed Peugeot (+5.5%) were both able to raise their registrations expanding their market shares by 4 and 3 percentage points respectively. With a combined share of 48.7% these two represented almost half of the true fleet market in France – the highest percentage in more than three years.

Renault’s success came from a number of models: Megane, Kangoo, Talisman, Scenic, Clio and Zoe all achieved higher volumes in comparison to April 2016. Within Peugeot it was more concentrated: the second generation 3008 is clearly the top-seller and stands at 30.4% of all of Peugeot’s registrations for fleet customers in April. But the smaller 2008 also contributed with a percentage growth of +27.6%.

Within the top 10, Mercedes (rank number seven) and Ford (rank number eight) achieved growths of 1.5% and 2.7% respectively with both gaining one position over last April’s rankings.

Among the interesting new entries to the market over the last year, the most prominent ones (in terms of volume) in April were Audi Q2, Toyota CH-R and Seat Ateca – obviously all belonging to the SUV segment. More notable however is the importance they already hold within their respective brands. At Audi, the Q2 is ranked number three (behind A4 and A3). For Toyota, the CH-R is in second position (only beaten by the Yaris) and with SEAT the Ateca was its top fleet seller for April 2017.