Mercedes-Benz sales up in October
November 10, 2009 by Matt Brogan
Sales at Mercedes Benz increased month-on-month for the first time this year in October.
Mercedes eclipsed the 82,500 units from 2008 by seven per cent, taking year-to-date sales to 826,000 – still 14 per cent below last year.
The news was worse at Mercedes’ sister company Smart, which managed to sell just 9300 units globally, down almost 18 per cent on October 2008.
Mercedes sales increased most dramatically in China – up 78 per cent to 6600 vehicles – a result that head of sales and marketing Dr Joachim Schmidt says strengthens its position as the fastest growing premium brand in Asian powerhouse.
“Mercedes-Benz Cars will continue to grow at a dynamic rate in China, and we expect the increase for 2009 as a whole to amount to more than 50 percent,” he said.
Australian sales also picked up in October, rising 22 per cent on last year.
Mercedes puts the positive results down to the successful launch of the new E-Class (selling 17,100 in October) and updates to the S-Class, of which sales increased by 12 per cent globally, as well as tremendous growth in the Asia-Pacific region.
Dr Schmidt says the addition of the E-Class wagon this month will continue to boost sales for the remainder of 2009.
“We will continue this positive trend in the coming months, and we expect sales in the fourth quarter to be above the level of the same period of last year.”
by Tim Beissmann
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does this mean that the crisis is over or is just Mercedes-Benz one of the best performers during economic falls?
Well the Aussie dollar is doing pretty well, it seems we’re coming out of this recession!
Tom, Contrary to the rest of the world, Australia never really went into recession. A recession is generally defined by 3 sequential quarters with declining production – unlike the U.S. and Europe, that did not really happen here.
In that you are correct, the Aussie dollar dumped a load about a year ago which ironically made prices for export very tantalizing for the rest of the world, mainly China and primarily on mining and raw materials.
As far as Mercedes goes, I can only guess that the new C class is a large reason for their growth, which ironically is a far better car than the old C class and is actually even priced lower than it predecessor, which is not very usual.
Personally I think the Mercedes C class is a sleeper- a really, really good car and even a great car in diesel format, but the 200 petrol is a very good vehicle all the way round.
I think the one thing in Australia which should go into permanent recession is the taxes charged on vehicles here. If you look at most every other country in the world and compare say a Mercedes C200 to what it costs in the US or Germany or Italy or anywhere in the world vs. Australia, you will find the costs here are outrageous.
Mate your definition of recesiion is a bit off. It is actually two consequitive quarters of negative growth meaning a year of negative GDP figures. We never got that but every other developed country in the world performed much worse than us.
Shak, try this one:
http://www.theage.com.au/opini.....-7lld.html
Audi, MB and BMW sales up during tough economic times. The rich are getting richer …
Not really:
- the top end of the market (e.g. Aston Martin) has dropped, so those buyers have had to downgrade to M3s and C63s;
- The Germans have numerous vehicles in all sorts of niches. Plus their cheap cars (e.g. 120i) can be had for lesss than 50K.
Just because you drive a BMW 320i with M-Sport doesn’t mean you’re rich. Now if a person drove past in an M6 you could say he was better off than most…
how are their sales going up??? benz’s are looking uglier and uglier if you ask me