Italy’s true fleet market saw double-digit growth of 16.4% in April, building on a strong first quarter.

The Jeep Compass put in a strong performance in Italy’s true fleet market in April

The rise marked the fourth consecutive month of market growth according to analysis by Nils Wehner of Dataforce, with other segments also reporting increases. The private market was up by 2.2% despite the strong surge of private customers to zero kilometre offers over the recent months while special channels rose 1.6%. Overall, new car registrations rose to 179,000 units, up 4.3% on April 2017.

Within the fleet manufacturers top 10 ranking, Fiat maintained its lead, with Volkswagen in second, driven by 62.0% growth. This was especially led by the Golf, Tiguan, Polo and Up. Audi, Ford and Mercedes followed in ranks 3 to 5 with only Mercedes falling short of April 2017’s numbers.

Jeep – a newcomer to the top 10 in April – came in sixth, with a rise of 119.6% mainly due to the Compass. It also achieved a new record fleet market share (4.9%) and surpassed BMW in seventh by just two registrations.

The highest growth came from Nissan (eighth), which surged by 125.3% with the Qashqai taking a much bigger share of the growth pie than the small Micra, while Peugeot and Renault completed the ranking.

Dataforce also looked in depth at the SUV segment, which achieved a fleet market share of 42.4% in April, once again representing the highest market share ever in the Italian true fleet channel.

In contrast, the second largest fleet vehicle segment (compact cars) saw a market share of 15.5% in April.

As well as the Jeep Compass, the Toyota C-HR, Citroën C4 Cactus, Nissan Qashqai, Alfa Romeo Stelvio, Audi Q5 and Peugeot 3008 all managed to double their registration volume compared to April 2017.