BMW Remains Luxury Leader In U.S. But Segment Slips In April

BMW continues to lead the luxury vehicle sales race in the United States but overall sales in this segment fell throughout April.

Auto News reports that last month, BMW sold a total of 23,816 vehicles across the United States, a 1.4 per cent increase over the previous year. By comparison, Mercedes-Benz sold 22,949 vehicles last month across the country, a huge 16.6 per cent decline from the same month in 2018. Whereas BMW has reported three consecutive months of sales gains, Mercedes-Benz has suffered through six consecutive months of falling sales.

Heading into May, BMW had sold 3584 additional vehicles this year in the United States than Mercedes-Benz.

Mercedes-Benz wasn’t the only premium car manufacturer to lose out last month. Sales of Lexus vehicles fell by 1.3 per cent to 21,360 units while Audi deliveries plummeted by 21 per cent to 15,024 units. All told, sales in the luxury car segment dived by 5 per cent last month.

According To Kelley Blue Book analyst Akshay Anand, these delivery figures show that the luxury sector is not immune from challenges facing the rest of the industry.

“As usual, the ‘winners’ of the month in luxury primarily consisted of SUVs, a sign that even increasing gas prices is not slowing down the SUV boom. It’s going to be a tricky 2019 to navigate for luxury automakers who don’t want to throw tons of incentives at vehicles in order to move metal,” Anand said.

Of the vehicles which BMW sold last month, 48 per cent were crossovers and SUVs, including the X3, X5, and X7. The highest-selling Mercedes-Benz model last month was also a crossover, namely the GLC.