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Half-time score
Page 62
Page 63
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Our regular survey of van sales shows signs of definite nudging and shoving, as some models drop a gear to zoom into the lead.
This is our second detailed look at the UK's light commercial vehicle market; we plan to publish these sales league tables every six months.
Creating our first round-up, which looked at the whole of 2004, revealed a few problems reconciling our layout with the way some manufacturers publish their figures, so to make life easier for all, we have realigned our categories.
The only significant change is to put all large vans, such asTransit and Sprinter, into the same category regardless of G VW, and to do the same with medium vans such as the Transporter and Vivaro. So on this occasion not all of our figures are directly comparable with the end-of 2004-numbers, but it should make things clearer in future.The 2004 figures have been amended to reflect the revised categories.
We've also added a couple of new names to our smallest category, for hatch and carderived vans. Although not strictly meeting the description, the Suzuki Carry and Daihatsu Extol (and its Hijet predecessor) are aimed at the same buyers and, especially the Suzuki,sell in significant numbers. In fact, including the Carry has seen the previously second-placed Fiesta van demoted to third, both in the first half of this year and for the whole of 2004.
As expected, MG-Rover's contribution to the figures has virtually dried up, as has Citroen's Xsara Enterprise five-door,This is due to Xsara car production going over to the new C4 range, but Citroen also has a newcomer in the shape of the tiny C2 Enterprise. The rest of the category stays in the same order, with the Astravan still retaining more than half of the enlarged category. There are no new players or changes to the rankings in the high-cube category. However, the Transit Connect and Combo, and the fifthplaced Peugeot Partner,have increased their market share, at the expense of all but the static VW Caddy.
With the transfer of all Transit variants to the heavy class, there's obviously a new leader in medium vans. But it's not the previous runnerup — the Vauxhall Vivaro has been overtaken by the VW Transporter to the tune of 836 units. The Volkswagen has already passed 82% of last year's total, and the Vauxhall is nudging 60%. Other models which have already sold more than half of last year's total are the Renault Traftc and Nissan Primastar, and the Peugeot Partner.
In the newly populated heavy van category, the Transit is still king, staying on track to match 2004 numbers.The Sprinter retains second spot, despite a half-time score below 40% of 2004, but there's a change for third as the Daily range usurps the LDV Convoy. LDV is in a transition period with the Maxus and Convoy selling in the same segment and their combined sales running at 40% of the Convoy's previous full year numbers.
Somewhat surprisingly, given its lack of development compared with the Sprinter, VW's LT is showing an upward trend. Rising star of the sector, indeed the whole market, is the Fiat Ducato, which at 97% of 2004's year end is guaranteed a bumper yea r, while its cousins, the Citroen Relay and Peugeot Boxer, are looking good at 65% and 55% respectively.
The pickup market has seen another star performance as the Mazda B2500 has managed almost 84% of last year's figures al ready.At the top, though. Mitsubishi has reinforced its position with just under 40% of the market to itself. Second-placed Nissan has widened its lead on the Ford Ranger, even before its attractive new Navara joins in (see pages 70-1).Toyota and lsuzu's offerings are holding steady,but the petrolonly 4x2 Proton is losing favour.
Tata has slumped as a result of its distribution deal with MG-Rover owners Phoenix, and we are still awaiting some indication of the brand's future in the UK.
Overall Ford still dominates, but in terms of market share, Vauxhall is closing the gap. Ford's share is down from 30.7% to 29.6%, while Vauxhall's is 16.9%, up from 15.8%. Demonstrating how close things arc below these two, Volkswagen's share is up to 8.5% from 6.6 %, which is enough for it to climb from sixth to third spot, exchanging places with Mercedes. •