With 800,931 BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce brand automobiles delivered to customers, sales of the BMW Group rose in the first seven months of 2006 by 5.7% compared with the same period last year (757,551).
Sales of the BMW brand through the end of July 2006 rose by 8.2% to 683,724 cars. All model series contributed to this success. The main driver of growth is still the BMW 3 Series with a rise in sales of 25.1% to 290,587 automobiles. The flagship of the BMW brand, the 7 Series, increased in the first seven months of 2006 by 16.4% to 29,072 units. As well the third core model series in the BMW brand, the 5 Series, was once again able to pass last year's high level (131,407 automobiles) by 3.3%, with sales reaching 135,704 units.
Demand for the MINI brand once again outstripped supply. The extraordinary reason why the production figures have been below last year's during the year to date is, as already mentioned, the building work for the expansion of capacity in the Oxford plant to 240,000 units a year. In addition, the infrastructure of the plant is currently being re-equipped for production of the next generation MINI that has already been announced. For this reason, sales of MINI through July 2006 were, with 116,869 units, 6.7% below the corresponding figures for last year (125,241).
Rolls-Royce delivered 338 Phantoms to customers in the year to July this year, passing last year's level (330 units sold) by 2.4%.
In the motorcycles segment, sales in the first seven months of 2006 reached 65,136 vehicles, which is slightly below last year’s figure (67,164/-3.0%).
Monthly comparison: in July 2006, BMW Group sales reached 102,452 automobiles. This is the second-best sales result that the company has ever achieved in a July. Only in July 2005 was an even higher figure recorded, at 110,957 vehicles sold. Due to a series of special effects, the figure is thus 7.7% below the record sales levels for July 2005, as planned: the new generation of the BMW 3 Series Sedan was fully available worldwide in July 2005 after its market launch in March 2005. Compared to July 2004 this had led to a leap in sales of 47.8% to 28,137 units in July 2005 (previous year: 19,038). This unusually high base figure was not quite maintained in July 2006 (-10.7%) when 25,141 deliveries were recorded. In addition, further model cycle-related special effects relating to the BMW brand meant that the monthly figures did not reach the same levels as last year. The new generation of the BMW 3 Series Coupé will be delivered to customers from September 2006. The predecessor model was therefore only available to a limited extent in July 2006. This led to a drop in sales of 54.0% to 1,080 automobiles compared with the same month last year (2,348 deliveries).
The BMW X5 is coming to the end of its model cycle. For this reason, there was an above-average decline in sales in July of 37.1% to 5.514 automobiles. A model upgrade was announced for the BMW X3 from September. Here, sales reached 7,661 units, which is 18.9% below the previous year's level (9,448 automobiles). For the MINI brand, the measures in the Oxford plant mentioned above continued to restrict supply in July, thus depressing sales somewhat: the number of vehicles delivered fell in July 2006 by 7.7% to 15,804 compared with 17,124 in the same month last year.
In July 2006, Rolls-Royce exceeded the previous year's level with 51 Phantoms delivered to customers by 13.3%.
In the motorcycles segment, the number of units delivered in July was
9,031 units (previous year: 9,877/-8.6%).
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