Audi Q5 Improves Balance Sheet

2023 Author: Eric Donovan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-08-25 09:36

BMW and Daimler suffered a drop in sales of almost 24 percent in April. It went better at Audi, where the Q5 is generating good sales figures.

The German premium car manufacturers BMW and Daimler are still in a deep sales crisis. In April, both manufacturers once again posted a hefty drop in sales of around 24 percent each. Only the Ingolstadt competitor Audi did significantly better with a decline of only 5.6 percent to 81,923 vehicles in April. However, the VW subsidiary also benefited from some new models that significantly improved the balance sheet.

Q5 brightens the balance sheet

The Q5 alone, which was not yet on the market last year, improved the balance sheet by 8,854 vehicles in April, as a spokesman said on Friday when asked. The A5 sold better. Here demand rose by 13.4 percent to 5715 units. In the other series, the minus was not as drastic as with the competition. 18,497 vehicles of the A3 were sold in April, eleven percent fewer than a year ago. In the case of the A4, the decline was at a similar level with 25,852 cars.

The larger and older models A6 and A8 performed significantly weaker. Here the minus was just under 18 or 45 percent. In the first four months of the year, Audi sold 291,951 cars and sales fell by 13.6 percent. The company reiterated its goal of selling a total of 900,000 cars this year. This would be 10 percent less than in 2008.

BMW again had to cope with drastic sales losses. The number of BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce cars sold fell in April by 23.8 percent to 101,589 units. In the first four months, the minus at BMW with 378,859 cars was 21.9 percent. The situation remains dramatic, especially in the important US market. The sales figures were more than 40 percent below the previous year's figure.

One does well

When looking at the individual series, the small 1 Series did particularly well. The previous year's figure was reached with 19,712 cars sold. The new 7 Series and the relatively fresh X6 also did well. In contrast, it looked all the more disastrous with the other models. Sales of the small X3 off-road vehicle collapsed by almost 41 percent, and that of its bigger brother X5 by almost 42 percent. With the 3 series, BMW had to cope with a minus of almost 31 percent and with the 5 series a decrease of 26.6 percent.

Competitor Daimler had reported similarly bad numbers the day before. In the Mercedes-Benz Cars division (Mercedes-Benz, smart, Maybach), sales fell by 24 percent to 90,900 cars. At the core brand Mercedes-Benz, sales fell by 23 percent (80,700). In March it looked like a ray of hope when sales in the passenger car group had only fallen by 16 percent. In addition to the persistently difficult market situation, BMW and Daimler also blamed two fewer working days for the drop in sales in April. The Stuttgart-based company is now hoping for the introduction of the new E-Class in important markets such as the USA or China. (dpa)