BMW bumps Mercedes, Lexus to become America’s top luxury brand

For a full decade, Lexus has been parked at the top of the U.S. luxury car heap, but no more. Sales stats released this week have put a different brand in the top spot, and that brand is BMW.

The Wall Street Journal reports that BMW and rival automaker MercedesBenz both delayed sharing sales figures for December 2011. While most brands released those numbers on Wednesday, BMW and Mercedes held their stats for an extra day. Both knew that they were contenders for the top luxury spot in the U.S., and each wanted the other to announce figures first, in hopes of following up that announcement with a triumphant “We’re #1” press release.

It was a very close race -- not as close as Romney and Santorum in Iowa, but still neck-and-neck. In the end, BMW sold 247,907 luxury vehicles over the course of the 2011, while Mercedes sold a couple thousand less, ringing in at a very respectable 245,231. (The race was closer back in May, when the two were separated by just 29 sales.) Both companies’ year-end figures represent double-digit increases over 2010.

And Lexus? Lexus came in much further down the chart, at 198,552, more than 13% below 2010. What happened? In the history books, 2011 will go down as a pretty bad one for Japanese automakers. The March 11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami left much of that country crippled for weeks and resulted in vehicle shortages in many markets, including the U.S. The flooding in Thailand that took place during the second half of the year didn’t help matters.