Industry Sales Results
Industry Sales Results

Mercedes-Benz powers on in March

Mercedes-Benz sales in Australia continue to power on at a rate that its main luxury rivals aren't matching, growing almost 30 per cent in March alone.


The Stuttgart marque recorded 3482 deliveries across its passenger, SUV and commercial range last month, enough to finish as the 11th most popular brand overall.

As has become the norm, its rivals Audi (1858 sales, up 22.4 per cent) and BMW (2310 sales, up 14.4 per cent) also posted excellent growth, but both trail Mercedes-Benz by some margin — and the margin is growing.

Now, we know what you might be thinking: Mercedes also makes commercial vehicles, unlike the other two, so the direct comparison is erroneous. That’s correct, but Benz’s passenger and SUV sales alone were 2961 units for the month — still more than the others.

Mercedes has clocked up 8820 units so far this year (7650 if you remove commercial vehicles), compared to 5854 for BMW and 5482 for Audi.

Most eyebrow-raising was the continued dominance of the new-generation C-Class sedan and wagon, which managed 918 sales for the month, making it the second best-selling medium car on the market behind only the Toyota Camry.

This is more than double the Audi A4 (395) and BMW 3 Series (393), and not far off doubling the Mazda 6 (545).

In addition, the ageing C-Class coupe managed a huge 499 sales (up 77 per cent), more than double the much newer BMW 4 Series — enough to make it the single top-selling sports car ahead of even the Hyundai Veloster (347).

Another segment-topper was the A-Class, which managed 393 sales, ousting its premium hatch rivals the BMW 2 Series Active Tourer (229), Audi A3 sedan and hatch (226) and BMW 1 Series (217). Nevertheless, the A-Class’ figure was actually down 16.4 per cent on March 2014’s figure.

The CLA, however, addressed this by doubling its sales from 109 to 226, while the GLA recorded 201 sales, almost all of which was incremental given it recorded just 17 units last March, as it was only just launching.

Perhaps most intriguing of all, though, was the performance of AMG, which managed about 300 sales for the month, led by the CLA45 AMG. And remember, this is largely without the generally top-selling C63, which is between generations.

Mercedes-AMG managed almost 800 sales in Australia over the first three months of 2015, a truly vast figure by global standards, and about 10 per cent of Mercedes Australia's annual running total. There may be nowhere else with such a high proportion.

It wasn’t all roses for Mercedes, though, with the E-Class sedan/wagon down 12 per cent to 101, GL-Class down 23 per cent to 49, M-Class down 8 per cent to 211, SLK-Class down 71 per cent to 12 and Vito down 14 per cent to 101.

Once Mercedes launches thew new GLC later this year — it currently has no Audi Q5 or BMW X3 rival — and its just-confirmed ute in 2018, the top-ten better watch out, we suspect…

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MORE:Search Used Mercedes-Benz Cars for Sale
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