John Teahen Jr., senior editor of Automotive News, publishes a report that without a doubt will cause some controversy on here. His report focuses on the true-luxury sales in the United States for 2009.
One might ask: what defines a true-luxury car? According to John, any car with a sticker price of $45,000 or more.
Automotive News Europe estimates that 600,000 true-luxury cars were sold last year in the United States. Based on the units counted, the 2009 “King” and leader was the BMW brand with 119, 219 units. Second came the old school rival, Mercedes Benz which fell short by only 431 units.
Mercedes-Benz was the leader from 2006 through 2008.
BMW’s 119,219 deliveries meant that 61 percent of its 196,502 sales were in the true-luxury category. Mercedes was a fraction better at 62 percent.
In the overall luxury segment, BMW and Mercedes finished second and third, behind the Japanese rival, Lexus. Out of overall Lexus sales numbers, 58 percent were represented by models that are priced below the $45,000 cut-off point. Lexus had 83,754 true-luxury sales.
Cadillac follows the foreign automakers trio with 64,801 or 59 percent of total Cadillac sales.
Audi came in sixth.
A full report and further breakdown can be found at AutoNews.
Author: Horatiu B.
Source: http://www.bmwblog.com/2010/02/17/autom ... -for-2009/