For Volkswagen Group South Africa – from a quarterly sales perspective, the third quarter of 2011 yielded total new sales of 27 183 units, the largest number of quarterly new car sales so far in 2011. This was up 9.3 percent on first quarter of this year, 18.5 percent up on the second quarter and 45 percent above the third quarter of 2010.
Internationally, in the first nine months of the year, the Volkswagen Group held its own in world automobile markets and boosted deliveries by 13.9 percent to 6.11 (5.36 million YTD 2010) million vehicles. Deliveries in the month of September also developed well for Europe’s largest automaker with 751 900 (663 300 units or an increase of 13.3 percent YTD 2010) vehicles handed over to customers.
“We are very pleased with the development of the Group. Delivering six million vehicles in nine months represents a key milestone on the way to reaching our annual target of eight million vehicles sold in 2011,” Group Board member for Sales Christian Klingler stated. “We are also expecting very good delivery figures for the fourth quarter. We continue to keep a close eye on developments in global automobile markets, some of which are highly volatile,” Klingler added.
Locally, Volkswagen Group South Africa improved its January to September sales from 62 622 in 2010 to 86 770 in 2011 – an increase of some 39 percent. This was also substantially above the South Africa total market increase of 15 percent in the Passenger and LCV/MCV markets.
The Volkswagen Brand achieved sales of 67 991 units during the first nine months of 2011, up 32 percent on the 51 455 figure over the corresponding period last year. The Audi Brand increased its sales figures from 9 041 units in 2010 to 11 791 in 2011 – some 30 percent more. The Commercial Vehicles Brand enjoyed the most significant growth once again – 228 percent – in the period from January to September, having sold 2 126 units last year compared to 6 987 this year.
Volkswagen Communications General Manager, Matt Gennrich, said, “We are very pleased with our performance year-to-date and are well on track to achieving our sales objectives for 2011.”
