The true fleet market in Spain put in an impressive performance in July, scoring a 20.8% rise, and providing it with its highest-ever market share.

The Fiat Tipo recorded both its highest volume and market share in the Spanish true fleet market up to now

Research by Christian Spahn at Dataforce shows it’s the third time this year that the market has scored a growth rate of more than 20% and also the third time in a row that the segment outperformed the private market, which rose 10.2% last month. As a result, the market share for the first seven months of the year reached a record level of 20.1%.

Registrations to rental companies, dealerships and manufacturers also increased significantly (up 36.1%), helping to drive to the market to just under 137,000 new car registration in July – up 18.6%.

Within the top 10 true fleet brands, July brought some quite extreme results in terms of growth rates. The top two brands, Volkswagen and Renault, both had particularly bright results, up 60.1% and 70.6% respectively. Since February their fleet volume has been climbing month by month.

Audi in third place scored a strong result as well with a 23.8% rise. Toyota had an outstanding performance, increasing its volume by 112.4% and gaining eight positions – it was only six units behind Audi. The biggest push came from the Auris (for the second month in a row), ranking second in the compact car segment (July 2017 rank number 10) behind the Renault Megane.

Nissan was down by 15.3% and ended up in fifth position – it was first in July 2017 – followed by Peugeot, Seat and BMW. Mercedes and Ford completed the top 10 but saw falls of 30.0% and 26.2% respectively.

Dataforce also noted the strong performance from the Fiat Tipo, which recorded both its highest volume and market share in the Spanish true fleet market.

The automotive data specialist also looked at the true fleet market fuel type performance in Spain, which like elsewhere in Europe is seeing diesel lose ground against petrol. In July, diesel’s market share was down by 12.8 percentage points (pp) while petrol gained 6.1 pp. The hybrid share climbed from 5.0% (July 2017) to 9.3% which is the second highest value ever. And the share for CNG/LPG in combination with petrol even jumped from 0.4% to 2.7% – a new record in the Spanish True Fleet Market. The biggest part of the growth of bivalent powertrains came in fact from the Fiat Tipo (more than 80% of Tipos were equipped with the 1.4T Bifuel engine) but Seat (Ibiza, Leon) and Dacia (Dokker, Lodgy) also contributed signi