Deliveries of BMW brand rise by 2.4%
New MINI generation starts on November 18th
Munich. In October, the BMW Group came one step closer to reaching its sales objective of setting a new record in 2006. In total, sales of BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce brand automobiles rose slightly by 0.2% in a monthly comparison to 108,881 units (previous year: 108,634). In the year up to and including October, the BMW Group, with 1,130,439 units sold, delivered 33,325 more automobiles to customers than in the comparable period last year (1,097,114/+3.0%).
For the BMW brand, the number of vehicles delivered rose by 2.4% to 94,983 automobiles (previous year: 92,753). This means that sales for the year to October reached 969,213 units (previous year: 921,350), which is a rise of 5.2%. The success of the BMW brand is due both to the core model series – the BMW 3, 5 and 7 Series – and to the models which were only launched for the first time in recent years. Examples of these are the BMW 1 Series, the BMW 6 Series and the BMW X3. With a total of 645,169 vehicles sold in the 3, 5 and 7 Series, the core model series represent 66.6%, or precisely two thirds, of total BMW brand sales in the first ten months of 2006.
The biggest increase was recorded by the 3 Series, with a rise in sales of 18.5%, corresponding to 416,489 3 Series vehicles sold (previous year: 351,502). Sales of 7 Series automobiles totalled 41,227 units, which is 6.9% over the previous year (38,573). The 5 Series, with 187,453 automobiles delivered, recorded a rise of 1.3% (185,002). BMW has thus managed to increase sales of the core model series – 3, 5 and 7 Series – even further despite the continued expansion of its product range. The market launch of the second generation of yet another BMW success story, the BMW X5, is coming up shortly: it will be supplied to customers in the USA and Canada from November 24th onwards.
Just a week before, on November 18th, the new generation of MINI will be launched initially in the European markets. This is a further milestone in the history of the world's most successful premium small car. The production of the new MINI in the expanded plant in Oxford is already running full steam ahead. Sales of the current generation dropped to 13,821 MINI delivered shortly before the start of production of its successor (previous year: 15,810/-12.6%).
Despite the building work to expand capacity and change over production to the latest MINI generation, sales in the first 10 months of 2006 reached 160,674 units, which is only 8.3% below the comparable value from 2005 (175,229). The expanded capacities will allow MINI to reach a level of sales in 2007 which will exceed the existing 2005 record level of over 200,000 units delivered (200,428).
Rolls-Royce increased the number of Phantoms delivered in October 2006 by 8.5% to 77 automobiles (previous year: 71). For the year to October, 552 of this most successful model in the absolute luxury class were handed over to customers. This is a rise of 3.2% compared with the same period last year (535).
In the motorcycle segment, sales in October reached 6,926 units, which is well above the previous year (5,697/+21.6%). For the year to October, the previous year's level (86,525) was almost equalled, with 86,259 motorcycles
sold (-0.3%).
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