It was all smiles at BMW Group Malaysia when they announced that 2017 was their best year in the country yet, delivering 12,680 to new homes across Malaysia. On the global scale, the BMW and MINI brand achieved all-time high sales figures, resulted in BMW Group (as a whole) maintaining their Number 1 position in the premium brand segment.
In 2017, BMW Group delivered 2,463,526 cars worldwide, up 4.1 percent compared to the previous year. The Group’s core BMW brand recorded a 4.2 percent increase in global sales amounting to 2,088,283 units in a single calendar year. BMW X models were once again the main driving force with sales of X vehicles up 9.6 percent compared to the previous year. Other models that contributed greatly to the total sales include the 5 Series (+6.3 percent; 291,856), 1 Series (+14.7 percent; 201,968) and the 7 Series (4.5 percent; 64,311).
BMW’s performance arm, BMW M GmbH also achieved record sales in 2017. M division delivered a total of 80,795 units, up 19.1 percent compared to the previous year. The M2 charted the strongest growth with total sales of 12,293 units. M Performance variants of the new BMW 5 Series also contributed strongly to the increase in sales.
The MINI brand proved to be increasingly popular with customers across the globe, achieving an all-time high of 371,881 vehicles sold in 2017 – an increase of 3.2 percent compared to the previous year. The MINI Countryman saw a significant jump in sales of 30 percent (84,441) while the MINI Convertible was also a strong sales driver with 33,317 units delivered to customers.
Rolls-Royce, on the other hand, did not share the same success stories as the other two. The high-end luxury carmaker recorded a 16.2 percent decrease in sales to 3,362 units across the 50 countries it is represented in. The drop in sales was due to the absence of the new Phantom which was only introduced in July 2017 and first deliveries are scheduled only in January 2018.
As reported earlier, BMW Group has delivered 103,080 electrified vehicles to customers, exceeding their initial target. At the launch of the G30 530e PHEV, BMW Group Malaysia has expressed that Malaysia is the fifth largest market for BMW Plug-in Hybrid vehicles.
China remains the single largest market for BMW and MINI cars in 2017 with 594,388 units delivered to new customers, 15.1 percent increase from the previous year. In Asia, the group delivered a total of 847,493 units (+13.6 percent) of BMW and MINI vehicles. A total of 1,100,975 cars were delivered across Europe, a slight increase of 0.9 percent from 2016 but Americas suffered a slight decrease in overall sales, with only 450,020 units (-2.0 percent) delivered to customers due to the limited availability of BMW X models.
Board member of BMW AG, Pieter Nota added “I am confident BMW sales will continue to grow during 2018, while we also maintain our focus on profitability. Increased availability of BMW X models and our ongoing model offensive, which includes the launches of brand new models this year such as the BMW X2 and the BMW 8 Series, will ensure we bring even more customers to the BMW brand in 2018.”
