Audi’s Q1 sales record steps up challenge to BMW

Audi is stepping up its challenge to unseat German rival BMW as global luxury-car sales champion, with recovering European demand and Chinese growth pushing its first-quarter deliveries to a record.

Volkswagen’s flagship luxury division, already leading BMW by a whisker after two months, said yesterday deliveries in March rose 15.4 per cent to an all-time monthly record of 170,450 cars. Fuelled by demand for the expanded A3 line, Audi’s European sales, accounting for almost half of its global deliveries, were up 7.2 per cent in March, led by double-digit growth in Germany and the UK. First-quarter deliveries were up 11.7 per cent to a record 412,850 cars, Audi said, powered also by a 21 per cent gain in China where the carmaker started assembly of the A3 sportback model at a factory in Foshan in late 2013. – (Reuters )