Mercedes lead over BMW narrows to 104 units in U.S. luxury fight
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(Bloomberg) -- BMW, posting its first year-over-year sales decline in more than two years, managed to sell more luxury vehicles than Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz in the United States last month, narrowing the distance between the two competitors to 104 deliveries this year.
BMW's U.S. sales fell 0.5 percent in July compared with a year earlier to 21,297, the automaker said today in a statement. Mercedes sold 19,311 cars and SUVs last month, a 1.6 percent gain, while Toyota Motor Corp.'s Lexus sales rose 25 percent to 18,235.
"High summer is typically a time for vacations rather than car buying which makes the July result satisfying, especially with the unsteady economy and the very short supply of new models in our dealerships," Ludwig Willisch, head of BMW's U.S. unit, said in the statement.
Mercedes said it U.S. sales through the first seven months of the year rose 14 percent to 147,905 vehicles. BMW, which overtook Lexus last year to become the top-selling luxury brand in the U.S., sold 147,801 through July, a 9.4 percent gain. BMW beat Mercedes last year by 2,715 deliveries.
Prior to July, Mercedes led BMW by more than 2,000 deliveries for the year. BMW's last U.S. sales decrease was in May 2010.
The sales results in this story don't include Daimler's Sprinter cargo vans and Smart cars and BMW's Mini brand, which aren't luxury vehicles.
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