While Audi was top of the manufacturer charts with 19.1% of all new cars ordered, the A3 was the most popular model, claiming a 7.9% share, while the A4 grabbed a 4.6% share.

In second place was Volkswagen which took a 15.8% share, with the Golf being the second most popular model with a 6.5% share, while the Passat fifth.

Fleet Alliance managing director Martin Brown put Audi’s double top success down to the user chooser element amongst Fleet Alliance customers, particularly at the SME end of the fleet market.

‘The A3 continues the downsizing trend away from upper medium cars to smaller models that we have seen across the board in the fleet market.

‘Volkswagen is popular for similar reasons to Audi, especially with user choosers, and we have a strong German influence in our top 10, with BMW and Skoda also featuring.’

In third and fourth places in the Fleet Alliance league tables were Ford and Vauxhall, with 15% and 9.7% shares respectively of all new cars ordered during the year.

The fifth most popular manufacturer on the Fleet Alliance league table was BMW which claimed an 8.6% share of new car orders, with the most popular model being the 3 Series in 10^th place.

‘We have seen BMW come back quite strongly thanks to their green ‘Efficient Dynamics’ approach, which has proved popular with user choosers and with director and senior managers in the corporate sector,’ added Martin Brown.

‘Another feature of last year’s order bank was the number of vehicles our customers ordered from manufacturers such as Skoda and Kia. Their success shows that provided their vehicles have competitive whole life costs, customers are prepared to choose makes which would not traditionally have been considered strong fleet manufacturers,’ he said.