“Vehicle carriers arriving at the store are mostly bringing pre-sold vehicles.”
Mercedes warned of more pain ahead in terms of production and sales.
“The whole semiconductor thing has gone through the auto industry like a whirlwind,” Daimler CEO Ola Källenius told reporters last week.
“We’re working literally around the clock with our supply partners to try to solve this issue and gradually get back to some kind of an equilibrium and normality.”
Among other luxury brands, Audi reported sales of 41,019 in the quarter, down 14 percent from a year earlier.
Meanwhile, Porsche saw third-quarter sales slide 1.7 percent to 15,289.
Volvo’s third-quarter sales climbed 4.2 percent higher to 31,611. But September sales fell 9 percent, ending the Swedish automaker’s 15-month streak of year-over-year sales gains.
Third-quarter sales for Genesis, which has beefed up its product offerings this year, soared more than 300 percent to 15,022.
The wild card in the standings remains Tesla.
Sales results for the California luxury electric vehicle maker are not clear.
According to an estimate by the Automotive News Research & Data Center, Tesla delivered 84,000 cars and crossovers in the third quarter, up 55 percent from a year earlier.
That would put Tesla in first place in the U.S. luxury segment for the quarter and third place for the January-to-September period.
But Tesla only releases sales quarterly, and the company doesn’t provide a breakdown by global region, making U.S. estimates difficult.
