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Everitt rejected the idea that self-registration has played any significant role in the rise. Various manufacturers and industry chiefs have, over the past few months, raised concerns at the growing number of registrations being made by manufacturers looking to shift increasing amounts of cars being allocated to the UK as other European markets struggle. "I understand the proposition," says Everitt. "But no one can tell you what proportion of the market that is, and all the dealers say others are doing it but they don't. I'd imagine it's rather less than the noise being created. If you look at 2012, the increase in private registrations was constant throughout the year. There were no big spikes and each month was up by 10-12%, which feels like it's not random as there's a level of consistency." Everitt did, though, admit some degree of self-registration will have been happening "at the margins".
Looking at the chart of the top 30 fleet manufacturers, Ford grabbed the number one spot back from Vauxhall, partially due to the latter's move out of the less profitable business it previously engaged in. Vauxhall ended 2011 in front of its arch rival by 1416 registrations, but a drop of 18,809 during 2012 while Ford rose by nearly 3000 has seen a substantial lead emerge for the Blue Oval. Ford's Focus and Fiesta were again the two most popular fleet cars in 2012, with the Vauxhall Astra once more in third, ahead of its little brother Corsa, which bumped the VW Golf down a place to fifth. Vauxhall's reduction in fast-churn business is obvious by the big falls for the Insignia, Zafira and Meriva.
Volkswagen consolidated in third place in the table, although it was down 6.4%, with the rest of the top eight unchanged from 2011, all recording growth of between 2.1-7.8%. But the new order of things is obvious at the base of the top 10 with huge rises in fleet registrations for the fast-growing and much-improved Korean brands Hyundai and Kia. Both enter the top 10 at the expense of Toyota, which dropped a place to 11, and the plunging Renault, which more than halved its fleet registrations in 2012 to drop from ninth to 18th in the top 20 chart.
Hyundai in particular enjoyed strong fleet growth, with its overall figure up 18.1% compared with fleet growth of 24.8%, while Honda was another brand enjoying stronger corporate sales. Its overall share rose 7.2%, but in fleet it was up 19.9% as a result of the new Civic giving the firm a very competitive low-emission fleet offering in the lower-medium sector.
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