BMW LEADS AMERICAN PREMIUM SALES

While Lexus led US premium car sales for the past 10 years in a row, the Germans have finally caught up, and overtaken it. BMW brand sales so far in 2011 tally to 177 679, closely tracked by Daimler with 170 058 units, rounded off by Lexus in third with 135 647 cars sold since January.

For the month of September, BMW pushed out 21 750 cars off the showroom floors. That’s off the back of a hot-selling current X3 which found 1 853 homes last month. That’s compared to the paltry 146 it sold in September 2010 while running out the old model.

Meanwhile, the other significant players in the premium segment, namely are Audi, Cadillac, Infiniti and Jaguar/ Land Rover where nowhere to be found. Audi sold only 9 725 vehicles in the US last month, Cadillac managed 12 741 units, Infiniti (owned by Nissan) did 8 479 and Jaguar managed only 1111 compared to Land Rover’s 2 740.