German luxury car maker Audi tell us they have sold 1,092,400 cars in 2010 and that’s the Ingolstadt-based car maker’s highest ever annual sales figure.
So who’s buying these cars? Well 229,157 units stayed at home in Germany, whilst China gave them a close run, taking 227,938 vehicles and that’s a 43.4% increase on the previous year. The USA took over 100,000 Audi’s for the first time ever, whilst raise the flag as the UK car market accounted for 99,828 orders, becoming Audi’s 4th biggest market place.
From January 2010 to December 2010 Audi sold 647,600 cars in Europe and they say it confirms their position as Europe’s best selling premium car brand.
As a sub-note to this, Rolls Royce, who also make fairly handy cars have just announced that their sales for 2010 are up by a massive 171% over the 2009 figures.
Selling 2,711 cars in 2010 was a massive hike, but still does not match the record of 3,357 Rolls Royce’s they sold in 1978, but it is however the highest annual sales figure since BMW took over The Rolls Royce Company seven years ago.
Rolls Royce tell us that the USA still remains the number one market for cars costing over £200,000 ($310,000), however as with the Audi story, it’s the Chinese market that’s expanding with China becoming Rolls Royce’s second largest market, followed by Great Britain, The United Arab Emirates and Japan.
Volkswagen own Bentley and they managed to sell 993 cars in the UK in 2010 and that’s 30% up on 2009. Porsche (another VW brand) saw its sales figures jump by 28.5% to a total of 6,784 cars, whilst British manufacturer Lotus Cars saw a decent growth of 19%, supplying 577 vehicles whilst Aston Martin, another prestigious English name saw its sales drop by almost 9% to 1,080 vehicles.
So it appears there are plenty of “high rollers” out there to pay between £200,000 to £330,000 plus price tag for one of Great Britain’s most prestigious brands (even if it is now as British as sauerkraut).
