Why Mercedes-Benz isn’t worried about losing sales battle with BMW in Australia

Mercedes-Benz Australia remains focused on its own internal sales targets, despite losing the luxury car sales race to BMW last year.

BMW stole the mantle in 2023 and continued its supremacy with 26,341 total sales in 2024, 1510 more than Mercedes-Benz managed as its volumes slumped by nearly 14 per cent year-on-year.

Despite falling below BMW in the pecking order of premium auto brands, Mercedes-Benz still finished well clear of Audi, which registered a 19.5 per cent drop in sales to finish with 15,333 units in 2024.

Lexus and Volvo finished further back, with 13,642 and 8898 sales, respectively.

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We’re only two months into 2025, but the trend appears likely to continue – Mercedes-Benz has sold 3100 cars (3726 cars and vans), while BMW sales tally 3172. Audi remains third with 2158 vehicles registered through January and February.

Regardless, Mercedes-Benz Australia director of sales, Johannes Schoen, isn’t lending much attention to the ongoing battle between the German ‘big three’.

“We focus on ourselves. Our measurement of success is customer feedback — that is our priority,” Mr Schoen told CarExpert at the launch of the Mercedes-AMG CLE53 and GT63 in Tasmania last month.

“We met our internal sales targets last year, and we have targets for this year as well. We are going to focus on those targets in each individual segment.

“These product launches are super important for us. We want to serve our customers in the GT segment, the CLE53 segment, and hit our internal sales targets.

“That’s the goal, and that’s what defines success for us.”

After moving to a fixed-price agency sales model in 2022 and struggling with supply post-COVID, Mercedes-Benz has employed several different tactics to boost sales in Australia, such as introducing cut-price entry variants of popular models including the mid-sized GLC-Class and large GLE-Class SUVs.

The German manufacturer has also launched several special edition variants to spark interest, often using the Night Edition designation.

One key area in which Mercedes-Benz has dropped off compared to its competitors is EV sales. Mercedes-Benz was the fifth best-selling EV maker in Australia in 2023, but the manufacturer fell to eighth last year, when it was overtaken by luxury rival BMW.

Mercedes-Benz EV sales fell by 18 per cent last year, while BMW enjoyed a 160 per cent bump in 2024.

Once again last year, small SUVs were the top-sellers for both brands and the BMW X1 proved more popular than the Mercedes-Benz GLA (4536 sales versus 3103), while the C-Class (1943) was again outsold by the 3 Series (2472).

MORE: Everything Mercedes-Benz