BMW March Sales Up 14 Percent in the UK

The BMW Group in the UK has reported March sales of 24,395 vehicles, an increase of 14 percent from the 21,630 vehicles sold in the same month of 2009. For the first quarter, the BMW Group also reported a total sales volume of 35,864 vehicles, up 17 percent compared to 30,618 vehicles sold in the first three months of last year.

“This month concludes a very positive first quarter for BMW Group in the UK,” said Tim Abbott, Managing Director of BMW Group UK. “Following the successful market introduction of our new 5 Series towards the end of March, we have already received over 3,300 advance orders of which nearly half are for the new 520d which goes on sales in June.”

“The BMW 320d EfficientDynamics Saloon, launched in March, has already proved very popular with customers with around 50 per cent of our 2010 sales volume sold,” added Abbott. “This underlines the continuing strength of the BMW brand and the desirability of not only the new models we are launching in the premium sector such as the X1, but also in our used car values which are showing encouraging signs of recovery. MINI has also had a good start to the year, led by a particularly strong performance from our MINI Convertible models.”

Taken separately, sales of the BMW brand increased 5 percent in March, with the BMW 1 Series, the BMW 3 Series Saloon and Touring and the BMW 7 Series leading the numbers.

On the other hand, with a record March market share of 1.99 percent, MINI UK’s sales volume increased by 33 percent in March compared to the 5,976 vehicles reported in the same month a year ago.