(April 13, 2012) MUNICH, Germany — The BMW Group sold more vehicles in March than in any other month in its history. The company sold 185,728 BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce vehicles in the past month, not only significantly exceeding the figure for March of last year by 12 percent (165,846) but also the previous sales high of 165,855 vehicles recorded in June 2011.

The company also achieved a new high for the first three months. Retail volumes for the year to the end of March increased by more than 40,000 vehicles to 425,528 units (previous year 382,763 units), which represents a growth of 11.2 percent compared with the first quarter of 2011.

Ian Robertson, member of the Board of Management, Sales and Marketing BMW, said, “These outstanding results are due to our attractive, young model range and our strategy of healthy, balanced growth across the globe. We aim to continue the momentum with additional new models this year, such as the luxurious BMW 6 Series Gran Coupé and a model revision of the flagship BMW 7 Series”.

The company plans to grow faster than the market as a whole in 2012 and expects to achieve new sales volume records for its BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce brands.

With sales of 153,004 vehicles, more BMW brand vehicles were sold in a single month than ever before. Sales for the year to the end of March reached a record 356,548 vehicles, an increase of 11 percent over the first three months of last year. All models performed well in March, including an excellent start for the new BMW 3 Series sedan with 29,004 vehicles delivered, up 19.2 percent from last year's 24,331.

Strong gains were achieved by the BMW 1 Series 5-door Hatch with sales climbing 40.8 percent to 18,598 vehicles as well as for the BMW X3, with a 59.4  percent growth in sales and 14,847 vehicles delivered.

Sales of the BMW 6 Series increased nearly six fold compared to the same month last year with a total of 2,247 vehicles delivered to customers. The current BMW 7 Series reached a new milestone in March with more than 200,000 vehicles sold since its introduction at the end of 2008. This makes it the best performing BMW 7 Series ever, reaching around 20 percent higher sales than its predecessors in the same period of time. With 6,648 vehicles delivered in March, the flagship model achieved a 14.5% increase in sales.