Nitrous,
Thanks a lot for those figures this is exactly what I have countless times said it in many posts, People have jumped ship too early in India when just with a margin of 100 cars some other VW Group company goes ahead and everyone assumes time is up for Mercedes-Benz. In fact the way I see it Come June 2012 and the time for real Mercedes-Benz will begin, The W222 S-Class launches,
Coming to the topic, Audi has a huge advantage due to early mover advantage but in China Mercedes and BMW are catching up a lot faster than Audi is in the U.S in fact in a class like S/7/A8 I know very few people there who even talk of the A8 and the sales charts should be enough for anyone to judge, considering they have ridiculous commercials on TV showing how S is now old age and A8 is new, well someone needs to show them almost every review where S beats the A8 in Comfort and Dynamics, and lets not even get to Audi and it's quality which is greatly exaggerated only because they offer a mixture of various materials, Not saying Audi is bad but honestly unless you got their models with Quattro there is little advantage in their FWD cars,
In India also I believe none of us at this point can say a brand is losing it only because a few XYZ we know bought other brands, in that sense so many I know have bought S-Class or Mercedes (
few on the forum itself - Androdev) the market is too small and still long way to go before we have a clear winner, but I can assure you in the Long run catching up with BMW is going to be hard, and keeping the global picture in mind all 3 are only going to be swapping their places as new products come out but I still believe the Rise of Mercedes begins now, and the world will be left scratching their heads on how it began esp. once the current horrible E / C are replaced in 2013 and 2015,
Some more numbers from US for reference :
3 / C / A4 24 698 / 18 107 /
5 / E / A6 12 709 / 13 873 / 3581 (A6 is cheapest in US Base)
7 / S / A8 3380 / 2559 / 1065
X5 / ML 8675 / 11 480
Z4 / SLK / TT 610 / 1091 / 547
Also below is overall car sales for the EU. Have left a few cars other than the luxury car brands if anyone is keen to know where some of the cars we have in India are ranked in the EU in terms of sales ranks. And again as you see in almost all segments BMW and Mercedes are ahead and if Audi leads it's only by a small margin on the E, which is such a bad product good lord who in the world allowed it on the drawing board, but lets hope the facelift towards the end of the year will change it enough to get a nice push but still the margin is quite less considering it's the oldest in the class,
Europe Q1 2012:
Pos Model Q1 2012 Mar Mar-12 2011
1 VW Golf 124,019 1 53,609 1
2 Ford Fiesta 94,076 2 49,639 2
3 VW Polo 90,289 4 38,374 3
16 Mercedes C Class 43,323 14 18,977 16
19 Fiat Punto 39,668 31 13,586 11
20 BMW 1 Series 38,693 17 18,110 29
24 BMW 3 Series 37,402 15 18,678 17
25 Audi A3 34,999 23 16,199 25
28 BMW 5 Series 31,961 26 14,411 24
29 Audi A4 31,195 24 15,499 20
32 Audi A6 29,970 33 12,725 49
36 Mercedes E Class 28,433 32 13,241 31
38 Mercedes B Class 27,970 34 12,234 74
43 Audi A1 24,196 37 11,808 42
47 Hyundai i20 21,855 49 9,647 54
57 Hyundai i10 19,807 51 9,415 61
62 BMW X3 18,425 60 8,249 77
63 Mercedes A Class 18,417 62 8,160 45
64 Audi A5 18,313 56 8,899 68
72 BMW X1 16,839 67 7,846 52
73 Audi Q3 16,654 72 7,193 206
75 Suzuki Swift 16,562 66 7,969 73
76 Skoda Yeti 16,231 79 6,557 82
79 Range Rover Evoque 15,172 71 7,437 182
83 Audi Q5 14,687 82 6,076 70
Regards,
P.S : Don't take the above as a bashing to any brand, but it's strange how the attitude towards Mercedes here is, and it greatly needs to be understood correctly, don't make someone sleeping sound like the dead! Quote:
Originally Posted by Nitrous Power Following are US sales data for Merc, BMW & Audi from WSJ |