Just yesterday, we reported on 35% decline in sales for Mercedes-Benz in January, and we’ll probably keep doing that the entire year, judging from the current economic situation. To nobody’s surprise, the rich are not as much affected as the middle class, which are the people who usually buy the C and E-Classes. One indication on how the rich can still afford things are the sales numbers of the AMG Mercedes models. Mercedes-AMG is actually celebrating the most successful year in its company history. AMG succeeded in increasing unit sales worldwide by 19 %, selling 24,200 vehicles (previous year 20,300) and bucking the market trend in extremely difficult conditions.
As in previous years, the USA was the strongest market for AMG with a share of 38 % of total sales. Germany came in second place (13 %), followed by Japan (8 %). The greatest growth markets of 2008 include amongst others China and Brazil with rates of increase of 260 % and 565 % respectively. With these figures AMG confirms its leading position amongst high-performance vehicle brands and at the same time further expands its market share in the high-performance segment.
