In the"true" mini group, which only represents 2.1 per cent of the total car market here, the Fiat Seicento (693) just held its lead from Ford's Ka (674), with more distant second and third places taken by Citroën's Saxo and Opel's Agila. In fifth place is Daewoo's Matiz, and between them, these five hold almost 79 per cent of the segment sales.
In the supermini group, 23.3 per cent of the market, Fiat's Punto, at 5,553 units sold, is comfortably ahead of Peugeot's 206 (4,690 and Europe's biggest selling car, by the way), with Toyota's Yaris (4,055) and VW's Polo (3,803) racing hard for third place. After that, Nissan's Micra - on its run-out in favour of the January new model - was holding a lead just ahead of the combined old and new Ford Fiestas (the new one came in late summer), while Renault's Clio (2,532) has improved both its sales and market share just below that pair.
The top five in the segment hold a commanding position of more than 61 per cent of cars sold in the group.
Next year, the recently-arrived Daewoo Kalos, the Hyundai Getz, the new Nissan Micra and a spring-launch Mazda 2 are all likely to change the shape of the section, along with the strongly-challenging CitroëC3, whose 525 sales in a part year don't reflect its potential.
- Brian Byrne