Summary of mainstream premium car brands' China sales in May
The China Passenger Car Association (CPCA)'s data showed that retail sales of China's locally-produced premium car brands, including Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Cadillac, Jaguar, Land Rover, Volvo, Infiniti and Acura, totaled 178,187 units in May with a year-on-year growth of 9.4%. Additionally, year-to-date deliveries also climbed 5.5% to 852,940 units despite a continuous downturn in overall China’s auto market.
BMW (including Mini) outsold Mercedes-Benz and Audi in May, gaining the honor of champion among premium car brands by monthly China sales.
As to the year-to-date sales, BMW outperformed Mercedes-Benz for the first time in 2019.
The BMW X series and SUV family made a great contribution to BMW’s double-digit year-on-year growth, especially the locally-produced BMW X3. There were over 46,000 units of the all-new BMW X3 sold from January to May, among which the May sales amounted to roughly 10,800 units, over 2,000 units more than that of the Audi Q5 (8,613 units).
Mercedes-Benz saw its China sales in May edge down 0.9% over a year ago to 55,589 units, while its Jan.-May sales still edged up 1.6% year on year to 287,639 units, accounting for 30.65% of the brand's global sales.
In May, sales of the Mercedes-Benz GLC rose 13.1% from the previous year to nearly 11,000 units, taking up nearly 20% of total China sales. The automaker stated that several mainstay models will get some revisions and it still forecasts a better sales performance with the all-new GLE and the upcoming all-new EQC pure electric SUV hitting the market.
The year of 2019 is the year of SUV for Mercedes-Benz's China business. The automaker will reportedly roll out around 10 SUV models in China over the next several months.  
Audi was the only German premium brand that faced negative growth in both May sales and Jan.-May sales in China. However, compared with the previous month, the carmaker still gained a slight growth of 3.4%.
Last month, the sales of Audi A4L grew 9.2% over a year ago to approximately 14,100 units and the sales of the Audi A8L surged 87.3%. Nevertheless, the sales of the Audi A6, amounting to 5,575 unit, were almost halved from the year-ago period. Some industrial people considered that the sharp decline should be mainly attributed to the model’s iteration—the all-new Audi A6L hit the China’s market in January 2019.
In sharp contrast with Infiniti's blooming growth, Acura only sold 516 vehicles in China last month, suffering a plunge of 67%, according to GAC Acura. In addition, its year-to-date sales also slumped 41.4% from the previous year.
The car brand will start to locally produce the all-new RDX SUVs in the year.
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