Industry

Daimler has achieved a substantially lower profit in 2018. This is partly due to higher costs for new models and innovation, rising raw material prices and negative exchange rate effects. However, the company boosted its sales and revenues. In his last yearly conference as Mercedes’ boss, Dieter Zetsche gave today an explanation for a year with strong headwinds affecting Daimler, which according to him was also seen in the results and the decreased stock price of the company. Profit before tax fell from 14.3 billion euros in 2017 to 11.1 billion euros in 2018. It is not all bad news, though. Total revenue was 2 percent higher at nearly 167.4 billion euros while worldwide vehicle sales rose 2 percent last year to nearly 3.4 million units. In addition, the sales of Mercedes and Smart went up a fraction to almost 2.4 million cars, partly due to headwinds from the trade tensions between China and the US and stricter European environmental regulations. Meanwhile, sales of trucks, … [Read more...] about The fallout: Daimler announces lower profit for 2018

Mercedes-Benz conquered for the third consecutive year the title of the world’s largest premium car maker with 2.31 million units sold across the world. BMW stopped at the threshold of 2.12 million units, while Audi sold 1.87 million units. More precisely, Mercedes-Benz sold 2,310,185 million cars in 2018, a slight increase of 0.9% compared to 2017, and remained the world’s largest premium builder. SUVs continued to represent the most popular segment with about one-third of sales, while the compact segment recorded a quarter of sales. The best-selling model of the brand was the C-Class. The most important market was again China with over 650,000 of units delivered, while sales in Europe dropped by 2.3% to nearly 934,000 units. Meanwhile, BMW reported 2,125,026 units sold last year, up 1.8% compared to 2017. In Europe, the BMW Group brands (BMW, Mini, Rolls-Royce and Motorrad) sold 1,097,654 cars, down 0.3%, while China is (just like for Mercedes) the largest market … [Read more...] about Mercedes-Benz, the world’s largest premium car maker in 2018, surpasses BMW by nearly 200,000 units

In the absolutely superb 1949 war film Twelve O’Clock High, a doctor stationed at a U.S. Army Air Force base in WW2 England uses an interesting comparison when describing a character’s mental breakdown. “Have you ever seen a light bulb burn out? How bright the filament gets right before it breaks?” A similar phenomenon could be at work in a certain vehicle niche, one which gets more press than actual sales warrant. The lowly, reviled, and suddenly revered station wagon, now referred to in terms meant to dispel the stodgy family hauler image of decades past. Never mind that BMW just announced its 3 Series wagon won’t make a return trip from Europe. There’s wagons aplenty these days, and it’s this writer’s firm belief that you’ll never have a better change to bring home a competent non-light truck cargo hauler. It’s now or never. While wagon variants allow automakers to rack up additional sales of a given nameplate, the … [Read more...] about Rebirth, or Looming Fizzle? The Station Wagon Had a Pretty Good Year in 2018

The best-selling passenger car in America for the past 15 years isn’t selling like it once was, and it’s all your fault. With the car-buying populace increasingly wooed by do-everything crossovers and trucks, the Toyota Camry isn’t flying off dealer lots in the same volume as before, and, because of this, the automaker has made the decision to slow production of the mighty midsizer. What are people buying instead of the Camry? A lot of things, but loyal Toyota owners are increasingly heading over to the RAV4 for their grocery-getting duties. In terms of volume, the Camry closed out last year as the country’s seventh-best selling vehicle, helped along by a 2018 model-year restyle that lifted sales towards the end of the calendar. That buoyancy didn’t last, though it did help propel the sedan well ahead of its chief rival — the equally refreshed Honda Accord. As we documented over the long, hot summer, Camry sales began falling below last year’s … [Read more...] about Sad! Toyota Throttles Back on the Camry

Smart has never been a big success and Mercedes may not be willing to keep the brand alive anymore and replace it with a baby Benz. Automobile Magazine says that after the current generation Smart Forfour and Twingo, Renault will exit the partnership with Daimler for mini cars, so the current Smart platform would be compromised. One possible solution is simply to remove the Smart brand altogether from the line-up, but this is not supposed to occur until 2026 at the earliest. At the same time, Automobile Magazine says Mercedes could enter the mini segment with its own car, which could be launched after 2025. The question of missing technical bases is supposed to be solved with a new architecture by Mercedes: a variable platform, known as MX1. This could be the successor of the current MFA2 platform used by the compact family of models (A-Class, B-Class, CLA etc.) and would be a good base for smaller models. Regarding the future (potential) baby Benz itself, it is assumed it would … [Read more...] about Mercedes could kill Smart and launch its own baby Benz instead