Audi Ahead of Mercedes in Quarterly Global Sales

While German car manufacturers dominated the premium car segment for years now, their rankings didn’t remain glued to the ground. Although most petrolheads would pick a side between the traditional German rear-wheel drive premium makers, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, it seems the 2010 global first quarter sales bring Audi into the spotlight.

Volkswagen AG’s premium brand registered global sales of 264,100 vehicles in the first three months of the year, surpassing for the first time Mercedes-Benz who managed to sell only 248,500 units. For Audi, this performance marked a new record, standing some 25.9 percent above the sales results from last year.

Of course, Audi took this opportunity and poured more of its marketing material down everyone’s throats, reiterating its intention to become the “most successful luxury automaker in the world by 2015”, when Audi aims to sell around 1.5 million vehicles a year.
Last year’s global sales saw Audi came in only third in the premium car segment, behind Mercedes-Benz and first place winner BMW. When taking a closer look at Audi’s first quarter sales, the company’s dominance on the Chinese car market was one of the main factors that tipped the scale in its favor.

For the first three months of the year, Audi recorded sales of 51,449 vehicles in China, compared to BMW’s 34,179 units and Mercedes’ 24,100 units.

“We expect continued growth compared to last year in the second quarter of 2010. Some of the credit goes to the new generation of our flagship car, the Audi A8, which we are currently launching,” Peter Schwarzenbauer, Member of the Board of Management for Marketing and Sales at Audi said in a release.