May 10, 2010
AUDI AG handed over some 264,100 cars to its clients worldwide for the first three months of this year, manifesting its strongest first quarter ever.
In March alone, the brand released around 110,400 vehicles around the world. This is the all-time best monthly result for the Ingolstadt-based conglomerate. In fact, sales regions in Europe, North and South America, Asia-Pacific, and Africa including the Middle East all published double-digit growth figures.
According to Board of Management for Marketing and Sales member Peter Schwarzenbauer, “With these sales results, we have even surpasses the comparative figures from our record year in 2008.
“We expect continued growth compared to last year in the second quarter of 2010. Some of the credit goes to the new generation of our flagship car, the Audi A8, which we are currently launching.”
Schwarzenbauer also mentioned that the new Audi A5 Sportback and A5 Cabriolet prototypes also drove the excellent sales growth for Q1 together with the consistent steady sales of the Audi Q5, the A4 and the A6 models.
In Australia, Audi registered a significant 36% increase for Q1 this year compared to last year, with 3,713 units delivered. Just for March the carmaker retailed 1,163 units and posted a 37-percent growth vis-a-vis the first three months of 2009.
Sales in Europe for Q1 likewise displayed 12% growth to more or less 162,500 units. Western Europe exhibited the same growth trend where Audi attained twelve percent sales increase, with more or less 154,550 cars marketed. On the other hand, Eastern Europe’s increase was pegged at 10.7 percent in the same period.
The four rings logo continues to make its presence felt in the United States, with 21,315 new Audi cars traversing its busy highways for Q1 2010, up 34.8 percent from the same period a year back. Adding the 62 percentage points in Canada—equivalent to 3,230 cars, North America numbers total 35.4 percent. Its southern counterpart tallied to 70.5 percent improvement, thanks to approximately 3,000 units distributed mostly in Argentina, Brazil and the rest of South America.
Yet the China market (including Hong Kong) paraded off with the biggest progress overall: a whopping 77.3 percent leap versus Q1 of 2009. As a whole, Audi achieved 70.0 percent upsurge throughout the Asia-Pacific region with some 64,450 new Audi owners out on the streets.
Not to be outdone, the Africa and Middle East regions also exhibited significant ascent in sales. Nearly 8,400 mint Audis made their way out of the showrooms or roughly 40.2 percent higher than sales volumes from January to March, 2009.
In South Africa alone, 36.0 percent rise in sales or just about 3,286 new customers bragged about their spanking new Audi vehicles.
