Posted by Dale Buss
You'd think they were electing a new pope, the way BMW and Mercedes-Benz brand executivesstretched out the resolution of their mano a mano battle for leadership in U.S. luxury autos for 2011, as a tantalized global automotive press and many others wondered what the holdup was.
The two teasing German brands finally released their December sales results this morning, about 24 hours later than usual for a monthly sales report and many hours after every other brand in the U.S. market released their December and year-end sales reports on Wednesday.
And when the black smoke actually appeared, the expected winner became the confirmed winner: BMW edged out an aggressive December effort by Mercedes-Benz to sell more of its brand of vehicles in the United States for all of last year, with BMW edging out MBUSA's 2011 tally by 247,907 to 245,192.
Inventory-challenged Lexus — the US luxury winner for each of the last 11 years — finished a distant third, with 198,552 sales, and a promise to compete for the title again in 2012.
Overall, the Ford brand was the volume leader in the U.S. market last year, with 2,057,210 sales.
In some ways, it's difficult to understand what the fuss — and BMW and Mercedes-Benz's mutual waiting game — was all about. BMW's winning differential of 2,715 vehicles at the end of December turned out to be several hundred vehicles more than its lead at the beginning of December, despite huge levels of sales incentives on some of Mercedes-Benz's models during the fourth quarter.
Also, for weeks, each company's executives in public statements had tried to soft-pedal the importance of their battle.
But how they handled the reporting (or, more accurately, non-reporting) of their December results until today revealed the true significance of their grudge match. Behind the scenes, some media outlets were trying to claw the results out of one or both companies throghout yesterday afternoon and evening, with Mercedes-Benz reportedly ready to release its numbers on Wednesday evening but BMW insisting it wasn't ready. And Mercedes-Benz certainly wasn't going to allow BMW to wait alone until today.
For some in the automotive press, the BMW-Mercedes-Benz standoff was reminiscent of a similar hesitancy in reporting by Cadillac and Lincoln for 1998, in another era, really, when the two American-owned luxury brands were still slugging it out for segment leadership in U.S. sales. Executives of each brand accused the others of cheating.
In their announcements on Thursday morning, at least BMW and Mercedes-Benz executives played things straight ... mostly.
"This new burst of consumer confidence filled our dealer showrooms putting (BMW) over the top," said Ludwig Willisch, president and CEO of BMW North America, in a statement. Today's Mercedes-Benz press release on its 2011 tally, meanwhile, included no such burst of enthusiasm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment