True fleet registrations in the UK largely remained positive during 2016 despite economic and political conditions.

Nissan Qashqai retained its number one position as the best-selling SUV, followed by Kia Sportage.

Latest figures from Dataforce show that although the true fleet market stumbled slightly in the months preceding the Brexit vote, it finished well with a +1.7% uplift in December and +2.9% for the full year.

This compares to an overall 2.3% rise in the new car market according to Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) figures.

In the vehicle segments, SUVs expand their domination, with the market share increasing by 2.9% for 2016. In the SUV model Top five the Nissan Qashqai retained its number one position followed by the Kia Sportage (moving up from fifth), the Opel Mokka (dropping from second), the Ford Kuga (remaining in fourth), with the Hyundai Tucson rounding out the five with the largest lift in rank (moving up from 19th). Meanwhile the Renault Kadjar registered a + 55.3% growth (moving from 33rd to 7th) while the Jeep Renegade delivered a + 170.0% (moving from 30th to 18th).

Within the top 10 brands for 2016, BMW, Mercedes, Kia and Audi were the only manufacturers to improve in the year-on-year comparison. Kia had the largest growth with +39.0%, followed by BMW with +22.3%, Mercedes with +17.9% and Audi at +12.8%. Although the German carmakers predominately achieved this through registration of compact or middle Class cars, Kia’s was through the Sportage SUV, which once again dominated the Korean manufacturer’s volume for the year providing 66.4% of all registrations for the brand with an increase of 15.0% over the 2015 percentage total.

Despite the ongoing fallout from the diesel scandal, the VW Group saw a strong performance in the top 10 carmakers, with three out of the four double-digit growth brands attributed to group members. VW was up +17.0, Audi grew +27.9% with Skoda registering +39.0%. For Skoda, growth was spread across five of the seven current market models and the recent addition of the Kodiaq SUV to the line-up bodes well for 2017.

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