October global sales for the big German three are in and you may be surprised.
BMW, the world's largest premium car maker, and Mercedes-Benz Cars of Daimler posted sharp unit sales declines in October due to continued weakness in U.S. and western European markets.
Sales at the Mercedes-Benz brand dropped by 21 percent to 82,500 vehicles last month, while Smart enjoyed a 6.5 percent gain to 11,300 cars. As for BMW, brand sales fell 9.2 percent to 95,502 vehicles, while Mini sales dipped 3.4 percent to 17,385 cars due to the planned changeover in the cabrio model scheduled to hit dealerships in the first half of next year.
"We have adjusted our production output to reflect the market and remain focused on balancing supply and demand in the forthcoming months," BMW sales chief Ian Robertson said in a statement.
But it seems that Audi did not suffer the slump. Audi AG stuck to its goal to sell a million cars this year, after sales rose 7.2 percent led by growth in China and Italy. Audi sold 82,400 cars and sport-utility vehicles in October, the Ingolstadt, Germany-based company said. Ten-month sales rose 3.3 percent to 844,700 vehicles.
“Despite the current difficult economic situation, we will achieve our 2008 goal of selling one million cars,” Peter Schwarzenbauer, Audi's head of sales, said in the statement.