July 2011: BMW maintains global-sales lead over rivals Audi,
BMW kept its position as the world’s top-selling premium brand in July after global sales of the company’s core brand rose 7.1 percent to 108,721 units.
Not surprisingly, the fast-growing Audi comes second with 16 percent increase in sales or 106,000 units. Mercedes-Benz sales rose 2.7 percent to 100,391.
BMW’s head of sales Ian Robertson says the company remains on track to achieve the target of 1.6 million vehicles sold in 2011. “We have just reported the most successful July sales ever and we are well on our way to achieving our recently announced target of over 1.6 million vehicles in 2011, the best ever sales result for the BMW Group.”
In July, the BMW Group sold 129,094 vehicles, 7.6 percent increase.
Year-to-date, the overall sales of BMW Group vehicles (MINI and Rolls-Royce brands included) grew 17.9 percent in the to 962,468 units.
The bread-and-butter came from the new X3 and 5 Series, both models showing strong sales since their introduction to market.
While in the U.S., BMW Group reported sales of 26,120 vehicles in July, 11.7 percent more than a year earlier, in Germany the sales have leveled off, just 0.8 percent (23,212 units) increase compared to last year.
The Chinese market continues to grow at a rapid pace, now BMW’s third-largest market, with 36.1 percent increase in the same period to 18,858 deliveries.
The pressure comes from VW-owned Audi. The Ingolstadt-based automaker aims to overtake BMW as the most successful luxury automaker by 2015 and is targeting sales of 1.2 million cars this year. From January 2011, Audi sold 758,950 units.
Sales of the Mercedes brand reached 710,922 units in the first seven months of the year.
[Source: AutoNews ]
Author: Horatiu Boeriu
Source: http://www.bmwblog.com/2011/08/09/july- ... -mercedes/