Midway into 2021, the horse race for the luxury crown has a new chief.
BMW galloped to the front in the next quarter, powered by potent demand from customers for crossovers.
At the mid-year mark, BMW outsold German rival Mercedes-Benz by 7,348 units. Which is fairly a reversal of fortunes from a year ago when Mercedes had a sixteen,795 device lead around BMW.
The luxury car or truck phase has roared back to life from the COVID lockdown doldrums a year ago. Whole U.S. luxury sales rose sixty three per cent to 624,414 cars and trucks and light trucks in the next quarter, outpacing the broader industry’s forty nine per cent increase, even amid tightening inventories.
BMW sold 96,561 vehicles, up 90 per cent from a year earlier. Crossovers accounted for 60 per cent of BMW’s quarterly sales.
Lexus saw its sales climb 65 per cent to 83,459 vehicles in the quarter. Lexus sold 28,703 RX midsize crossovers for the period — almost 50 percent of the brand’s overall truck volume.
Mercedes-Benz, which had gotten off to a brisk start by using the pole placement in the 1st quarter, has slipped to 3rd location.
Mercedes delivered 82,390 vehicles, excluding commercial vans in the next quarter, up 39 per cent from a year earlier. The midsize GLE crossover led, with sales of 19,037 sales, followed by the GLC compact crossover, with fourteen,580 deliveries.