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Thanks to the growing demand for high-end shopping in China, luxury brands maintained strong growth in the first quarter of this year after the trend of reverse growth under the epidemic in 2020, although the overall base was low last year. But the growth rate of luxury is generally better than that of the industry. In contrast, Mercedes-Benz, as the "leader" of domestic luxury brands, is unexpectedly below average.

According to the latest sales figures from the three car companies in China, BMW won the first place in the luxury car quarter with more than 229700 vehicles, while Mercedes-Benz lagged behind BMW by a narrow margin, selling 222500 new cars in the first quarter. Although Audi is constantly catching up through "profit making", it still has a big gap with the first two in the first quarter of this year.

Although Mercedes-Benz surpassed the BMW brand by an absolute advantage in the first quarter under last year's epidemic, the BMW brand achieved a counterattack in a depressed car market with a relatively stable performance throughout 2020. For the whole year, 777400 new cars were sold, an increase of 7.4% over the same period last year. In the first quarter of this year, 229700 new cars were delivered with an increase of 97.3%, making it the "double crown" of sales and growth, which made it another record in domestic history.

According to BMW, thanks to the fact that the 3-Series, 5-Series and X3 under the brand are the absolute main sales of BMW in China this year, the 3-Series and 5-Series sold more than 40,000 vehicles in the first quarter, while the X3 sold more than 30,000 vehicles. Sales of these three series models account for more than 60% of BMW's sales in China.

Although the Mercedes-Benz brand differs less than 10,000 vehicles from BMW in the first quarter of this year, delivering 22.25 new cars in the first quarter, an increase of 60.1% over the same period last year, it can be seen from the growth rate of Mercedes-Benz in the first quarter. This performance not only makes Mercedes-Benz the smallest increase among the three brands, but also lower than the performance of domestic passenger cars. Retail sales of domestic passenger cars increased by 68.8% in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period last year, which is obviously higher than that of Mercedes-Benz, according to the Federation of passengers.

In terms of models, many of its best-selling models, such as C-Class cars, E-Class cars, S-Class cars, GLC and other products are showing double-digit year-on-year growth, but this is also based on the low base last year. After all, in the first quarter, Mercedes-Benz secretly upgraded its new E-Class from a 1.5T engine to a full 2.0T engine, which means that even though Mercedes-Benz consumers, who have always paid little attention to power, the 1.5T engine has limited Mercedes-Benz's growth. you know, the E-Class is one of the most popular models of Mercedes-Benz, which may be one of the reasons why it lost its top selling title in 2020.

Compared with the two luxury brands, Audi brand performance is not satisfactory, after all, the brand has become the three major brands "profit" the largest brand. Nevertheless, after being overtaken by Mercedes-Benz in 2017 and losing the top spot in sales, it was overtaken by BMW in 2019 and now falls into third place in the BBA. According to the data in the first quarter of this year, the brand delivered 207000 new cars, an increase of 83.3% over the same period last year. It can be seen that the gap between Audi and Mercedes-Benz and BMW has gradually widened. It is conceivable that Audi, as the first luxury brand to enter the Chinese market, has also played the role of a leader for a long time for quite a long time.

Because of this, how to help Audi's sales return to the first place has become the main consideration of Audi. According to Audi's plan, the company will further speed up the localization process, not only a joint venture with FAW to set up an independent sales company, but also a SAIC Audi team to become a new partner with SAIC Group to jointly promote development in China. In the future, FAW Audi sales Company will be responsible for FAW Audi's domestic cars, imported cars and future PPE products, while SAIC Audi will have its own domestic products. Try to promote the development of the brand through more new products.

It is worth mentioning that in addition to maintaining a greater outlook on fuel models, the three luxury brands have also arranged more models in the field of new energy vehicles, in an attempt to seize the domestic market through the new energy market in order to increase the brand market share.

Judging from the performance of the overall luxury car market, it continues the prosperity of the luxury car market in recent years. In addition to the demand for high-end car replacement brought about by the upgrading of consumption, the competition in the luxury car market is fierce, the phenomenon of price reduction for quantity is becoming more and more prominent, and the market share of luxury cars is also expanded. The growth rate of the luxury car market is expected to grow further this year.

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