BMW Group Smashes Monthly Sales Record in March with More than 165,000 Units

The BMW Group is on track to reach new records in 2011 with the company posting its strongest monthly sales ever in March. The Bavarian automaker delivered a total of 165,842 BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce brand vehicles in the past month, not only significantly beating the figure for March 2010 (141,717 units / +17%) but also the previous sales high of 152,721 vehicles recorded in December 2007. March sales rose in Europe by 7.8% to 93,540 vehicles, in Asia by a whopping 52% to 35,048 units, as well as in the Americas by 18.6% to 32,020 vehicles. Furthermore, the company recorded a growth of 21.3% in the first quarter of 2011 compared with last year increasing sales of all three brands from 315,630 units to 382,758 units for the year to the end of March. "2011 got off to an excellent start for the BMW Group with new sales records," said Ian Robertson, member of the Board of Management of BMW AG, responsible for Sales and Marketing. "Sales volume of the year 2011 is expected to rise to well over 1.5 million units, a new all-time high, with the BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce brands all achieving new sales volume records." For the BMW brand, volumes climbed 14.6% from March 2010 to 134,892 vehicles in March 2011, setting a new monthly record. The automaker also posted an increase of 20.8% in sales for the year to the end of March at 321,175 vehicles (prev. yr. 265,819). It is worth nothing that since its introduction exactly a year ago, BMW has sold more than 200,000 examples of the new F10 5-Series. With 30,689 units in March, (+28.5%) the MINI brand also broke its previous monthly record set in 2008, while the British automaker also posted sales of 60,860 vehicles in the first quarter of 2011, an increase of 22.9% compared with the first three months of last year. The Rolls-Royce brand continued its growth in March selling 261 cars, an increase of 108.8% over March '10 (125 cars). For the first quarter from January to the end of March, the number of Rolls-Royce motor cars delivered climbed 159.1% to 723 (prev. yr. 279) vehicles.