Mercedes loses premium sales crown to BMW

Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW) beat Mercedes-Benz to become the world's top-selling premium car brand.

It's the first time in five years that BMW has outsold Mercedes.

"Proudly claiming number one position in the global premium automotive segment for the BMW brand in 2021," Pieter Nota, head of sales at BMW wrote in a post on LinkedIn recently.

BMW has yet to release the official figures of full-year sales later this month, but deliveries have been tracking ahead of the Daimler AG brand for much of this year.

The automaker delivered 1.7 million BMW-branded vehicles through the first nine months of the year, it said previously, exceeding Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz by more than 112 thousand vehicles.

Reportedly, the BMW brand sold a record 2.2 million vehicles in 2021 while Mercedes-Benz sold 2.05 million passenger vehicles globally.

Mercedes on Monday (28 February) said a scarce supply of the components will continue to grip the industry during the first half of the year and to scale capacity globally. 

Sales of Mercedes brand passenger cars fell 5 percent to 2.05 units last year, parent Daimler said last week. Volume slumped by 25 percent in the fourth quarter as the semiconductor shortage continued to hit supply.