German luxury sales strong

Sales of luxury and prestige cars are a bellwether for the rest of the industry. When the leather-and-wood brigade begins to move metal, the vinyl-and-nylon set will follow.

And if you needed confirmation that things are on the up and up for the market generally, take a look at German importer BMW's first-quarter results for 2010.

VFACTS figures released yesterday show that the company sold 4316 vehicles from January 1 to March 31 -- up 16.3 per cent on 2009 and the best first-quarter figure ever for the company in Australia.

In isolation, March was a big contributor, also a record number for the brand, with 1479 registrations for the month, although it was only up two per cent on March 2009. Mercedes-Benz narrowly squeezed ahead for the month, with 1483 units.

The story across the entire BMW range, in the month of March or year-to-date figures, is consistently strong: for practically all models, either better than the year before, or, at worst, close. Only the X5 shows any real drop on a month to month basis -- and then it is not far behind 2009 when gauged on a year to date basis.

Newcomers such as the 5 Series GT and the X1 are too recent to make any real impact -- BMW sold 42 X1s and 11 5 Series GTs in March.

Breathing down BMW's neck are Audi which, at 3710 sales for the first quarter, was up 35.7 per cent on 2009; and Mercedes-Benz, which was up 22.1 per cent for the quarter with -- including commercials - 4739 sales on the board. 3850 of these sales were passenger vehicles (3110 for the same period in 2009, or 19 per cent better).

Toyota offshoot Lexus, although showing measurable improvements over 2009, is still trailing the Germans with total sales for the first quarter of 1688 -- compared with 1260 in 2009, which is a 34 per cent improvement.

And then there's Volvo. Nudging close to Lexus with 1135 sales in the first quarter, the now Geely-owned company is an even 30 per cent ahead of 2009, riding high on the relatively new XC60 SUV which is its biggest-selling model with 335 sold so far this year.

Maybe unexpectedly, the second-strongest Volvo is its big SUV, the XC90, of which 248 have been sold so far this year -- and that is down a touch on the 2009 figure of 260 for the same period.

An important newcomer due later this year is the replacement for the ancient S60 sedan that should significantly increase Volvo's sales.

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