Volkswagen's view of the year ahead for fleet sales:

Volkswagen believes its fleet volumes next year will broadly be the same as this year, but it plans to start the year “aggressively”.

“Then, if the market starts improving we will go for extra production, but we’re taking quite a prudent view of the year.

“We want to gear production more in tune with where the market is and focus policy on dealing with demand.

"We have certainly seen a significant number of our customers extend their change cycles to four years during the last 18 months, although we believe that the majority of customers are still on a three year change cycle.

"There will be a good opportunity for us to renew these extended contracts in 2010, particularly if business confidence improves during the course of next year.

"With our class leading whole-life cost proposition on new Polo and new Golf we are well placed to benefit from these customers coming back into the market."