Mercedes USA Reports Record Year-To-Date Sales Helped by M- and C-Class

(UPDATE: Mercedes-Benz has just issued a new press release containing different sales figures for the M, GL and R-Class models)

While the luxury German carmaker experienced a 3% decrease in its U.S. April sales (20,271 vs. 20,895 last April), Mercedes reported a 1.4% increase for the first four months of the year with 77,918 units sold (Q1 2007: 76,880), which is a new record high.

Surprisingly and despite all the talk about gas-guzzling SUVs, Merc’s M-Class saw its sales increase significantly over the past period. In particular, the M-Class’ sales rose 8.4% (2,582 vs. 2,382 units) for the month and 23.6% (12,089 vs. 9,783 units) for the first four months of 2008. The seven-passenger GL-Class gained 3.9% for the month with 1,938 units sold, but year-to-date sales were slightly down (-2.8%) at 7,619 units. The new C-Class managed to post a significant 33.5% gain (6,850 vs. 5,131 units) for the month and a 37.8% jump (23,991 vs. 17,413 units) in its January-April sales. -Continued

On the other hand, the rest of Merc’s line-up saw its sales drop during the first four months of the year: E-Class -18,6% (11,774 vs 14,458); S-Class -24.6% (6,571 vs 8,713); CL -3.7% (1,073 vs 1,114); SL -21.3% (1,651 vs 2,098); CLK -17.4% (4,534 vs 5,490); SLK -19.5% (2,049 vs 2,546); CLS -5.1% (2,678 vs 2,822); G-Class -23.6% (347 vs 454) and R-Class -14.7% (3,542 vs 4,151).