Move over BMW, it looks like there’s a new Sheriff in Town and that New Sheriff is Audi. BMW has enjoyed the Gold Medal as being the leader in luxury for the past seven years and Audi is moving in to claim their spot with sales between Audi models and BMW models showing a small difference between 2,110 vehicles sold this year. In August Audi outsold BMW with 108,100 models rolling off the dealership lots compared to BMW’s 102,730 being sold for the month.
Flash back to last year and you’ll see that BMW had outsold Audi by more than 40,000 cars. That seems like a huge number to try to catch up and surpass, but the Ingolstadt automaker is starting to receive a return on their investment of $25.6billion it had put into their research and development department by the Volkswagen Group. It’s taken a few years to get to where Audi is today, and plenty of new models to pick and choose through too, such as the Audi Q7, Audi Q5 and Audi R8. They have also gone into the subcompact and compact crossover market with the Audi A1 coupe and Audi Q3 Crossover.
Mercedes-Benz had been in second place for the leading luxury brand until last year when Audi took over that spot. Now Audi is intent on taking over first place by 2020. As the figures stand today, that is not just a goal, it is becoming a reality and we are all wondering what BMW will do to try to keep a strong hold on the title they have grown pretty comfortable with over the past seven years.
“Every month the figures are surprisingly good,” said Frankfurt-based Silvia Quandt analyst Albrecht Denninghoff. “Audi’s growth is overwhelmingly because of China, with the United States also playing a role.”
Source Auto News