World February 2013: BMW regains premium #1 spot from Audi

BMW 3 Series (US model shown)

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One Bloomberg story about worldwide premium sales I thought was interesting enough to share here. After being passed by Audi in worldwide sales in January, BMW regained the top spot in luxury auto sales last month with sales up 7% year-on-year thanks to the success of the new generation 3 Series (+26%) and X1 (+40%). Comparatievely, Audi is up ‘only’ 3% year-on-year, pushed by strong results from the A1 and Q3. BMW, which has been the world’s biggest luxury carmaker since 2005, is now in the lead year-to-date in 2013 as well but only 407 units ahead of Audi…

Can the CLA reverse Mercedes’ disappointing start of 2013 worldwide?

BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer said at the Geneva Motorshow this week that the carmaker’s factories are running at full capacity to keep up with customer demand. Meanwhile, Mercedes has fallen further behind in spite of the success of the new A-Class and B-Class models, delivering 37,229 vehicles fewer than BMW in February, down 6% year-on-year and up just 1% year-to-date. What is Mercedes doing about this?

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