Toyota Motor Corp’s Lexus and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz posted their highest US sales this year in July in a sign that the slump in luxury-auto demand is starting to abate.
Lexus deliveries dropped 17 per cent to 18,517 vehicles, Toyota City, Japan-based Toyota said on Monday. Stuttgart, Germany-based Daimler said sales of Mercedes-Benz autos fell 22 per cent to 16,228.
The results suggest that even luxury brands whose models for the most part are ineligible for the government’s so-called cash-for-clunkers incentive benefited from July’s improved auto sales.
The industry’s annual pace for the month was 11.2 million cars and light trucks, the highest of 2009, according to Autodata Corp. of Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey. “The luxury buyer is the buyer who most easily can defer purchases,” said Jim Hossack, an analyst at consulting firm AutoPacific Inc in Tustin, California.
Recovering demand in that segment “says something very good about consumer confidence with respect to buying new cars.”
Luxury sales fell 27 percent in July from a year earlier for cars and 40 percent for sport-utility vehicles, according to industry researcher Autodata. Total U.S. auto sales declined 12 percent, the smallest drop since May 2008, the firm said.
