Adding in the Smart cars and Sprinter vans, total Mercedes sales in May came to 33,189. Crediting BMW for more than 5,800 Mini sales, total BMW sales added up to more than 36,800 units.
Though it is the luxury class cars that make up the bulk of U.S. sales for the two companies, sales of the lower-priced models have been strongest. Sales of the BMW 3/4 Series rose nearly 18% year-over-year in May to 12,868 units and 1/2 Series sales are up 17% to 1,119 units. BMW’s only other year-over-year car sales gain in May came in its top-of-the-line 7 Series, where sales rose 55% to 943 units.
BMW’s crossovers and sport utility vehicles (SUVs) sold 9,312 units in May, down 10% year-over-year. The X3 dropped from 5,723 a year ago to 2,575 this year while X5 sales rose 34% to 5,797 units.
At Mercedes, the company’s C-class vehicle sales rose 40% to 7,413 units and its M-class SUVs sold 3,991 units, down 2.3% year-over-year for the month. The all-new 2015 CLA sold 2,816 units in May, up 132% compared with May 2014.
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Year to date, Mercedes has sold 136,926 units, not including vans and Smart cars, up 9.4% year-over-year. BMW has sold 136,447 units, not including the Mini-brand models, up 7.3% compared with the first five months of 2014. The sales race cannot get much closer than that.
The third best-selling luxury car in the United States is Volkswagen’s Audi, which posted sales of 18,248 units in May, up 11% and the second-best total for the brand since its U.S. introduction in 1970. Year to date, Audi has sold 75,353 units in the United States.
The fourth best-selling luxury car in the United States is the Lexus brand from Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM). In May, Lexus sold 15,176 units in the country, up just 0.3% year-over-year. For the year through May, Lexus has sold 68,079 units, up 3% compared with the same period in 2014.
And the U.S.-built challengers? General Motors Co.’s (NYSE: GM) Cadillac brand has sold 67,384 units so far this year, down 1.2% year-over-year. Ford Motor Co.’s (NYSE: F) Lincoln brand has sold a total of 38,786 cars and SUVs in the first five months of 2015, up 4.1% year-over-year. Neither poses much of a threat to the big two, but Cadillac sales are within reach of Lexus sales and could even pass Audi sales, given enough time and good products.
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