The Spanish true fleet market’s streak of 55 months’ consecutive growth ended rather harshly in September with the full implementation of the new WLTP cycle.

Peugeot led the way in the Spanish true fleet top 10 ranking

Latest research by Nils Wehner at Dataforce shows the true fleet sector fell 15.4% last month while Special Channels were also down by 16.1%. Across all market sectors, car registrations were down 17.1% with the total market finishing at 73,000 units.

WLTP also impacted the True Fleet top 10 brand ranking with the majority of OEMs facing notable volume changes compared to September last year. Peugeot secured the top position, up 1.4% over September 2017, followed by Volkswagen in second and BMW in third, both gaining one rank. For Volkswagen this was rather notable since it suffered a loss of 7.5%.

Seat rose seven positions to fourth and achieved the highest monthly growth rate among the top 10 marques (+28.4%), mainly due to the Leon, Ateca and Arona. Another big jump came from Toyota (up five places to fifth) with growth of 18.7%. Strong performers included the Prius Plus, C-HR, Yaris and the Auris Touring Sports.

Renault fell from second to sixth position, followed by Mercedes and Opel, which saw robust double-digit growth over September (+21.2%) with the biggest increases from the Grandland X and Crossland X. Citroën and Ford rounded out the top 10 with both OEMs facing drops in registrations.

Dataforce also looked in more detail at performance of the model segments. SUVs were down 0.8% last month – a relatively small decline when compared to other vehicle segments like the Middle-Class (-46.7%) or Compact Cars (-28.7%).

The only exemption came from the Small Car segment, which achieved a small surplus of 1.2% over September. Although there were also some significant volume losses, registrations of some models increased significantly. The VW Polo stood out most notably (+18.5%) while the Mini One/Cooper showed a stellar performance as well, almost doubling its prior year’s September volume (+93.1%). Three other models also finished positively over this difficult month inside the Small Car segment’s top 10: the Opel Corsa, Dacia Sandero and Toyota Yaris.