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Since the domestic automobile market has gradually entered the high-end, the sales competition between luxury brands has also become a concern in the industry. Especially since 2020, the Cadillac brand, which has maintained the crown of the second-tier luxury brand, has continued to decline, and has even been surpassed by the domestic independent new red flag brand.

According to the August sales figures that have been released, Lexus, Volvo and New Red Flag brands have all achieved significant growth. After the domestic car market suffered a huge decline in February, the market rebounded significantly, among which luxury brands performed prominently, maintaining a strong growth trend since April, and the growth rate has been much higher than that of the passenger car market. It has been at an all-time high of nearly 20% for several months in a row.

The Lexus brand sold a total of 20698 new cars in August, up 22.3% from a year earlier, which means that even in the off-season, it has achieved higher performance than before.

However, the brand showed some decline from the previous month, down 1627 from 22325 last month, or 7.5 per cent from the previous month. For such a decline in sales may be caused by the market, according to the China Automobile Association previously estimated that August car sales growth of 11.3% also showed a month-on-month decline, the overall market sales shrank to a certain extent. From January to August, Lexus's cumulative sales reached 138349 vehicles, up 9.06 per cent from a year earlier.

It has to be said that Lexus brands, which continue to "increase prices", still maintain the performance of sales growth that is the envy of other brands, because their sales growth is almost always achieved through "price for volume".

For example, there were official posters showing that the CT4 of the latest model had dropped from 239700 yuan to 189700 yuan from the official guidance, and even entered the market range of joint venture medium-sized cars. Of course, the discount model is not only CT4, the highest discount of its CT6 model has reached 125300 yuan, it can be seen that Cadillac still needs to "price for volume" in order to maintain the stability of certain sales.

The Cadillac brand's sales have not yet been announced, but the brand's sales performance last month has not been surpassed, with a gap of nearly 2000 units compared with Lexus in July, accounting for 10% of that month's sales.

The Volvo brand, which also uses "price for volume", achieved year-on-year growth in July, but its growth in August was significantly lower than that of Lexus. It has always been a second-tier luxury brand with mediocre domestic performance, even if it has not reached the marginal market. But it is also difficult to achieve brand transcendence. Volvo's sales grew positively from January to August, up 1.5% from a year earlier.

Volvo sold 15835 vehicles in August, up 11.4 per cent from a year earlier, while sales finally returned to positive growth from January to August, up 1.5 per cent from a year earlier, according to the data.

Compared with imported luxury brands, the new red flag brand, as a domestic independent high-end brand, has soared for many months in a row. Data show that red flag sold 21000 vehicles in August, an increase of 110% over the same period last year. Sales have surpassed the Lexus brand and may become second only to the BBA brand in sales performance in August this year.

In the first eight months, the Red Flag brand sold a total of 108500 vehicles, an increase of 108 per cent over the same period last year. It has not only become one of the few independent brands to achieve growth, but also become one of the most outstanding high-end brands this year.

Although Lexus has outsold Cadillac for many months in a row, there is still a lot of uncertainty in the battle for luxury brand sales rankings this year.

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