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Luxury car sales in 2019 registers the biggest drop in over a decade!
Sales of luxury cars in India declined by about 13% last year and was the steepest drop recorded in more than a decade. Economic slowdown, high import duty and BS6 transition all added up to owes of the luxury car sales in India. Auto Punditz had already predicted the slowdown in the luxury car sales last year (link). In 2018, luxury car market had already grown at the slowest rate in the past 10 years. Year 2019 proved to be a even bigger catastrophe for the luxury car market. And yes; the worst is yet to come in 2020.
Let us look at the OEM-wise sales trend for the past 13 years –
Mercedes has been pretty much the biggest luxury car maker in India. Even in 2019, Mercedes Benz was clearly ahead of the second-largest luxury car seller BMW by quite a margin. However; Mercedes sales fell below 15k units and was the lowest in past 3 years. It also registered the highest YoY degrowth in past 13 years!
BMW is fighting hard to outsell Mercedes Benz. And the story is similar in the global market. BMW has now gone on a product offensive mode and has launched a slew of new models/refreshes to fight MB. BMW India could sell 9,641 units in 2019 and recorded a fall of -13% YoY.
Audi India is not able to manage the tumbling sales and recorded the highest fall among the luxury car OEMs in 2019. The situation in 2020 will be even more dreadful as Audi is in midst of a range revamp and has entered the BS6 era with just three models on sale (A6, Q8 and A8 L).
Jaguar & Land Rover was an outlier in 2019 and was the only OEM to record a YoY growth. JLR India also touched 5k units for the first time in Indian market! JLR outsold Audi in 2019 and emerged as the third biggest Luxury Car OEM in 2019.
Volvo’s continuous growth streak was paused in 2019 and Volvo’s sales fell -15% in 2019 v/s 2018. Volvo India’s YoY growth was the least in 2019 since its launch in 2008!
We have plotted the growth of Luxury Car OEMs since 2007-2019 –
Do note the fall of Luxury Car Industry in 2019 to 35,274 units. Also in 2019; Mercedes topped the luxury car OEMs, BMW came second & JLR third.
The overall trend has been topsy turvy for all the OEMs; but Mercedes Benz has been the most consistent luxury car maker in India.