After four consecutive months of declining volumes, the French true fleet market has finally come back into growth with +5.1% over May 2016.

Peugeot saw growth of +31.6%, followed by Renault with +22.1%..

The figures from Dataforce show the positive result helped to reduce the year-to-date loss from -7.2% to -4.9% while the total market finished with 191,000 registrations equating to a +8.9% growth rate.

Within the brand league table, Peugeot saw growth of +31.6%, followed by Renault with +22.1%. The combined market share of these two is close to 48% in fleets compared to 33.1% in the private market.

Mercedes (ranked fifth behind Citroën and Volkswagen) and Audi in sixth place both gained two positions on the ladder. The top 10 was completed by BMW, Ford, Nissan and Toyota, with the latter able to overtake both Fiat and Opel with an impressive increase of + 38.4%.

The SUV and small cars segment were the highest selling and saw growth of +8.7% and +14.6% respectively but the compact car segment in third position was down by -5.8%. Within this group,  the Renault Megane was able to grab the top spot on the podium from the Peugeot 308 for the first time since March 2014. Dataforce analysis also showed that fleets tend to opt for diesel Meganes (86% share in May) while it’s almost 50/50 for diesel and petrol in the private market. And the share of the estate version in companies is more than double the height of private consumer share (47% vs. 20%).

Within the SUV segment, the Peugeot 5008 also saw a notable performance, ranking fourth in May behind Peugeot 2008, Renault Kadjar and Volkswagen Tiguan, just two months after its launch, indicating that it’s only a matter of time before this model enters the true fleet top three.