German True Fleets down 15% in April

German True Fleet sales last month were down 14.6% year-on-year, new figures released by Dataforce show. No doubt the fact that this April had three working days less than the same month last year had something to do with that. 

But the bad April results pushed the year-to-date results into -1%, an indication that the True Fleet market in Germany has not been having a great year so far. 

The overall car market in Germany declined by 8% last month, the weakest output so far this year. The Private car market declined by -8.1%.

The brand Top 10 was mainly static and negative, with only Mercedes and BMW changing places (to 3rd and 4th, respectively) an only Seat increasing its volume over last April by (7.9%).

Gaining five positions each were Peugeot (+26.7% to 11th place), thanks mainly to the new 3008 and the all-new Peugeot Traveller; and Fiat (+18.1% to 12th place), the Ducato and Tipo sharing the credits with the 124 Spider and Talento.

Despite the overall disappointment of April sales, some brands managed to grow in both the Private and True Fleet channels, notably Fiat, Seat and Suzuki among the volume brands, and Alfa Romeo, Infiniti, Maserati, Subaru and Tesla among the luxury brands. 

The three top segments were almost evenly matched in April: SUV, Middle-Class and Compact Cars were only 75 registrations apart from each other, achieving market shares of 20.4%, 20.3% and 20.3% respectively. Behind the Top 3, the spread between Utilities, Higher Middle Class and Small Cars was very close as well with shares of 8.0%, 7.9% and 7.7%.

Image: VollwertBIT, CC BY-SA 3.0; Dataforce