Mercedes Cuts S-Class Production Because of Lower Sales

Article here

The luxury limo segment has been declining for years (at this price point at least) - sales for each brand are only about half of what they were 15-20 years ago. But the problem for Mercedes is 1) the S-class is down worse than they expected.

In the first quarter, deliveries plummeted by nearly 37% to only 16,900 cars, including the AMG and Maybach derivatives. The German premium brand has not released S-Class sales details for the second quarter. However, combined deliveries of the S-Class, EQS, EQS SUV, and GLS dropped by almost 23% to 33,400 cars.

And BMW hasno problem sellingthe buck tooth 7 series.

Demand for the 7 Series and 8 Series increased by 11.4% to 30,249 cars through June.

Almost all of that will be the 7 series because the 8 series is at the end of its poorly selling lifespan. If Mercedes isn't leading this segment anymore it should sound huge alarm bells for the board and executives. They just don't seem to be in a good place right now.

Since the article made the inevitable S-class/7 series/A8 comparison, a note on that: every time it's brought up on this sub people line up to insult the design of the 7 series. But it's the only one of the 3 whose sales are up. The A8's age contributes to its declining sales ("Audi's D-segment cars suffered a 16.5% loss to 8,487 cars"), but if buyers really hated the design of the 7 series and the age of the A8 we'd expect them to flock to the S-class...but that's not happening. Maybe buyers just like the new 7 series.