{"id":158040,"date":"2021-01-11T10:09:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-11T15:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=158040"},"modified":"2021-01-11T10:09:00","modified_gmt":"2021-01-11T15:09:00","slug":"bmw-takes-u-s-luxury-sales-crown-for-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2021\/01\/bmw-takes-u-s-luxury-sales-crown-for-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"BMW Takes U.S. Luxury Sales Crown for 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
The 2020 BMW X3 xDrive30e offers performance and style in a very attractive wrapper. The company took the top sales spot for luxury automakers in the U.S.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Depending on how you count, BMW appears to have to emerged as the best-selling luxury brand in the United States, pushing past archrival Mercedes-Benz, which fell two spots to third place.<\/p>\n

In the fourth quarter of 2020, BMW brand sales totaled 98,750 vehicles, only a 2% decrease from the 100,797 vehicles sold in the fourth quarter of 2019, for the full year 2020, BMW brand sales dropped 17.5% on total sales of 278,732 compared to the 338,003 vehicles sold in 2019.<\/p>\n

Lexus sold a total of 275,041 passenger cars and utility vehicles moved into second place, nosing out Mercedes-Benz. For the full year, Lexus sales dropped 8.3% in 2020.<\/p>\n

(BMW ‘significantly increasing” electric vehicle production.)<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Mercedes-Benz USA reported sales of 78,078 vehicles during the fourth quarter. On a full-year basis, MBUSA recorded sales of 274,916 Mercedes-Benz passenger vehicles as fell behind BMW.\u00a0In addition, MBUSA also sold 50,999 Mercedes-Benz vans, which include some luxury vehicles and commercial vehicles, bringing MBUSA’s total sales to 325,915 units, a decrease of 8.9% versus 2019.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Lexus rode its utility-vehicle sales to a second-place finish in the luxury segment for 2020, passing Mercedes-Benz.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThere is no doubt that 2020 was a challenging year for automotive sales, but we have found that these challenges were due more to the circumstances, rather than consumer demand,\u201d said Bernhard Kuhnt, president and CEO, BMW of North America.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe owe our dealers and regional teams a lot of credit for their flexibility and dedication while adapting to the situation.\u00a0With their support we felt very confident throughout the second half of the year as consumer deliveries grew quickly — even exceeding own expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the challenges posed by the ongoing global pandemic, BMW brand sales in the U.S. improved significantly in the second half of the year \u2013 including several outstanding months \u2013 as the sales network reopened, production restarted, and inventory levels improved.<\/p>\n

The last four months of the year were particularly strong, owing much to increased production at Plant Spartanburg, which helped meet customer demand for top-selling models such as the BMW X3, X5 and X7 Sports Activity Vehicles.<\/p>\n

(Mercedes launching six all-electric models by 2022 \u2014 with two to be built in U.S.)<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

BMW and Mercedes have been trading the top position for the past several years, but Mercedes\u2019 drop to third position. However, the brand expects to be back on top in short order with an influx of product.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Mercedes may have slipped two spots in 2020, but it’s counting on a wave of new products to put it back on top in the U.S. in 2021.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dimitris Psillakis, president and CEO of MBUSA said, “We are excited to introduce nine new models in the months ahead, including the all-new S-Class and the EQS electric, and continue to leverage the natural market gravitation of SUVs.”<\/p>\n

In addition, sales of Mercedes-AMG high-performance models increased 29.1% to 11,128 units, which pushed the sub-brand to its best-year ever as sales increased 1.5% to 34,079 vehicles.<\/p>\n

Audi, the third of the popular German luxury brands, reported its sales dropped 4.8% in the fourth quarter and its sales for the full year declined 17% to 186,620.<\/p>\n

Volvo Car USA reported 14,244 cars sold in December, up 15.2% compared with 2019 and its seventh consecutive month of year-over-year growth. The company finished 2020 up 1.8% from last year with a total of 110,129 cars sold. The monthly result continued a strong upward trend, which saw the brand up 40% in December 2019 over 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the challenges our industry faced this year, I am humbled by what our employees and retail partners were able to achieve together,\u201d said Anders Gustafsson, senior vice president, Volvo Car Americas and president and CEO, Volvo Car USA.<\/p>\n

(End of year auto sales pick up due to pickups.)<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Sales by Cadillac, General Motors\u2019 top brand, saw its sales drop 17.1% in 2020 to 129,495. GM executives are hoping the new Escalade will boost Cadillac\u2019s fortunes in 2021. Meanwhile, Lincoln, Ford Motor Co.\u2019s luxury brand, reported a 6.1% decline in sales to 105,410 units. Much like it\u2019s Detroit-based competitor, it\u2019s counting on its recently rounded out line-up of utes to grow sales in 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BMW and Mercedes-Benz has been trading the title of best-selling luxury brand in the U.S. for the last decade, with BMW taking top honors for 2020. However, Mercedes finished third behind the only other brand that’s capture the crown in the last 20 years: Lexus. Find out more at TheDetroitBureau.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20009,"featured_media":156773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,5,12],"tags":[],"make":[36,43,75,76,85],"post-state":[],"category_old":[118,150,151,205,123,185,134,133,131,299,258,261,163,132,196,283,125,139,148,128,291,278,288],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158040"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20009"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158040"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=158040"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=158040"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=158040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}