The firm’s latest data shows that fleet sales (commercial registrations without manufacturers, dealerships and Rent-A-Cars) in the largest five markets in Europe saw growth of 12.3% last month compared to May 2013. That led to a cumulative growth rate of 13.5% for the first five months of this year.



The figures show that the fleet sector is showing considerably better performance than the private market.

In May, private new car registrations rose by only 1.1% and Dataforce says that was essentially due to the Spanish market where the continuance of the scrappage scheme caused an increase of registrations by 29.6%.



Four out of five big European markets were able to boost their fleet registrations by more than 10% compared to May 2013. Only in France the increase was moderate with +2.3%.


Almost all of the top 15 brands were able to exceed their volume from May 2013, with a strong performance from Skoda which doubled its registrations and was ranked on 12th position in the EU-5 Fleet Market. Nissan, Toyota, Seat and Volvo were very successful as well increasing their registration figures by more than 20%.



In Germany, Skoda was number five behind the market leaders VW, Audi, BMW and Mercedes and this market contributed more than 60% of Skoda‘s growth in EU-5. The Octavia performed very strong but the whole model range of Skoda achieved larger volumes. Beside the Octavia there were a couple of competitor models with an impressive volume growth, too: The Volkswagen Golf and the Citroen C4 Picasso increased their registrations in all five countries. The strong results for the Peugeot 2008 and Opel Insignia were mainly due to the fleet customers in the UK, France and Germany.


Dataforce adds that fleet sales put in a solid performance outside of the “big 5” markets. The True Fleet Market in the Netherlands grew by 4.2%. The Czech Republic and Sweden achieved 
+12.3% and +14.2% respectively. Only Belgium was lagging behind but showed a stable result with only seven registrations less than in May 2013.