The UK true fleet market continued to bear the brunt of VED changes and uncertainty over Brexit in March while diesel registrations continued to fall, according to latest figures from Dataforce.

UK true fleet registrations declined for the 12th month running in March.

Research by the firm’s Mario Zagar shows that overall new car registrations were just above 474,000, down by 15.7%, with all channels showing declines. The private market fell 16.5% while special channels was down by 15.9% and true fleet saw the smallest decline of 14.3%.

Among the true fleet sector, Vauxhall/Opel took the March top spot in the manufacturers’ league table for the fourth year in a row with Volkswagen in second, which scored the highest growth rate inside the Top 10 with a 14.9% uplift. Ford was third followed by Mercedes, Audi and BMW, of which only Audi secured a positive result with growth of 0.4%. Nissan (7th) was hardest hit in March, falling four places.

Toyota retained its 8th position from March 2017 while Kia in 9th was followed by Hyundai in 10th.

Dataforce also looked at the March performance of the fuel types in the true fleet sector and found petrol was up by 11.4% while diesel fell 37.1%, equating to a five-digit decline in volume terms.

Looking at the performance for petrol models, the facelifted Honda Jazz did well, jumping 16 places into fourth with 151.9% growth. The VW Golf moved from 14th to second place with 157.2% growth but the Hyundai Tucson outshone all other models, racking up a 860.9% rise, with a four-digit volume increase. In contrast, the Vauxhall Corsa remained in the top spot but dropped by 30.8% and Ford’s Fiesta (8th) also dropped by 58.2%.

Within the league table for diesel models, Mercedes took five positions within the top 10. GLA (10th from 46th) was the highest grower with a 98.7% rise and GLC (seventh from 36th) was not far behind with 78.7% increase. Losers were the A-, C- and E-Class, down by 52.6%, 37.5% and 34.0% respectively. Other positives came from the Ford Kuga (second) with a 6.9% rise and the VW Golf (first) which managed to secure a positive result with just 1 extra registration over last March, with the Kuga just 28 registrations behind.