In the middle of last year, Audi of America strategists began plotting seriously for the rise of the Audi Q5 to become the brand’s top-selling model in the U.S. market. And with the April sales results announced on Wednesday, that’s exactly what has happened.
The mid-size premium crossover from Audi was the brand’s best-selling vehicle overall last month, with sales of 3,241 units, up 32 percent from a year earlier – and just edging out sales of the traditionally top selling A4 sedan. The A4 franchise has seen some buyers shift to the new Audi allroad from the A4 Avant model that it replaced.
For the year to date, sales of 11,437 Audi Q5 units, up 36 percent, ranked only 211 units behind A4 sales, with the likelihood that Q5 will surpass A4 sales sometime during the year.
“The segment is strong, and we’re certainly participating in the growth of the segment,” Matt Carpenter, General Manager of Vehicle Sales for Audi of America, told Audi Progress. Q5 “is definitely evolving into our No. 1-volume model, and that was planned.”
The reaching of that goal began last year, Carpenter said, when Audi product planning and sales executives considered the rapid growth of sales of premium midsize SUVs overall, as well as “the strength of the product itself.”
Audi Q5 is, he said, the “best-designed” car and concept in the segment, with the most versatile engine portfolio, at the strongest overall value, beating out primary German competitors BMW X3 and Mercedes-Benz GLK. Audi Q5 “has become the center of gravity” in the segment, Carpenter argued.
So, Audi of America executives formally requested additional production of Q5 from the plant in Ingolstadt, Germany, where it is built, to supply their plans to meet what they believed would be increasing demand by Audi customers in the U.S.
“We made the conscious decision that, in 2013, Q5 could become our biggest-volume model overall,” he said. “And it ended up being a good one.”
The anticipated growth in demand for Audi Q5 also fed into the decision by AUDI AG to locate a new plant to build more of the vehicle in the North American region. Groundbreaking for the plant in San Jose Chiapa, Mexico, is this week, with the start of assembly of Q5s there still at least a couple of years away.
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