The Spanish true fleet market and total market for passenger cars have made a strong start to the year, latest Dataforce figures show.

The Spanish true fleet market was up +18.0% over January 2016.

The true fleet market was up +18.0% when compared to January 2016, while the passenger car Total Market also started well, delivering a little over 89,000 units and achieving +12.1% growth over January 2016.

Within the true fleet market, the small car segment was up 26.8% as a whole and saw Renault in first followed by Ford, Peugeot, SEAT and VW. Ford moved from seventh place to second with +132.8% growth, powered mostly by the Fiesta model with a little help from the new KA+. Meanwhile the new Seat Ibiza was unveiled in Barcelona last month and will help regain some home ground market share lost in 2016.

The compact car segment grew by just 5.9% but the most significant changes were inside the manufacturers’ top 5 with only VW (second) and SEAT (fifth) remaining from the January 2015 rankings. Ford again saw a strong rise, from eighth to fourth, but this was outshone by the German manufacturers. Both BMW and Audi tripled their volumes, recording growths of + 230.8 and a + 217.5 respectively on their way to third place for BMW and first place for Audi.

Finally, Dataforce found that the SUV segment continued its advancement with +29.2% growth when compared to last year but with only one newcomer to the manufacturers’ top 5. Mercedes claimed pole position followed by Nissan, Audi and BMW with Toyota (the newcomer) rounding out the final spot after climbing from 11^th place last year. While the RAV4 was the biggest contributor to this success, the C‑HR helped with 35.8% of Toyota’s volume.