The true fleet market in the UK continued to see negative growth, with May’s figures down 4.5% according to latest Dataforce figures.

Sales of Kia Optima grew by 350% in May.

The decline, which follows a 25.1% fall in April, came as the total market fell 8.5% in May, with the private market seeing the largest drop at -14.1%.

Within the true fleet top 10, May saw three new entries. Ford and Vauxhall/Opel continued to vie for the top spot, which went to Ford along with the highest growth rate inside the top 5 of 9.8%, almost solely driven by the Fiesta model performance. German brands took the next three spots, VW (third place), Mercedes (fourth place) and Audi (fifth place) followed by Nissan (sixth place) keeping BMW (seventh place) from joining its home-grown rivals. Notably all these brands retained their places from last year rankings.

Dataforce also noted the sibling rivalry of Hyundai (8th place) and Kia (9th place), with the brands scoring the highest in the monthly growth charts. Toyota jumped into 10th position in the chart from its previous 11th place listing.

Hyundai rose 48.0% and Kia 14.3% moving them into the top 10 from 13th and 12th respectively. Highest volume was seen with the Tucson and Kia sister model, the Sportage but worthy mention should be made of the Kia Optima, which managed an exceptional 350% growth.

The alternative fuel segment in true fleet had a strong month, with an increase of 33.1% taking its year-to-date growth to 14.8%. In the electric top five models, the BMW i3 took out first position followed by the Nissan LEAF, but Dataforce highlighted the takeover the Tesla Model X of the third spot from the Model S (fourth place) for the second month in a row while the Hyundai Ioniq was in fifth place, with both models marked out as newcomers to the market.