BMW Outsold Mercedes-Benz In America This Year, And It Wasn’t Even Close

A Sizable Lead

Now that we're past the halfway point of 2026, more and more automakers are releasing their respective mid-year sales reports. In the luxury market, BMW further widened its gap versus Lexus, reporting a positive growth with 186,944 vehicles sold so far. Lexus, on the other hand, shifted 169,712 units, slightly down year-on-year.

More recently, Mercedes-Benz released its report, which also showed a slight decrease from last year's figures so far. The company sold 145,000 passenger cars and 17,900 vans during the first six months of 2026, for a total of 162,900. In other words, it's quite far away from its rivals from Bavaria.

The Cars That Sold

In the BMW camp, the X3 and X5 remain the sales leaders, with the latter currently the best-selling model in the country. X3 sales grew by 29.8%, while X5 sales grew by 23.7%. That said, the 3 Series did its fair share, posting a 32.3% year-on-year increase.

As for Mercedes-Benz, they didn't provide a full sales breakdown of each model, but it did say that the GLC remains its best-selling product. That shouldn't really be much of a surprise, as that's been the case for years now. However, the folks from Sindelfingen are glad to report that the GLE had the strongest growth among core models with 'nearly 30%' more sales year-on-year. But the model that had the biggest sales glow-up was the GLB, with it up by a substantial 40%.

Room to Grow

While BMW sales took off in the second quarter, it's still worth mentioning Mercedes' efforts as both car and van divisions saw increases over their first-quarter results. Based on available data, the company sold 75,000 passenger cars and 9,500 vans for a total of 84,500 vehicles. That's an improvement of 7%, 12%, and 8%, respectively.

That said, there is still some catching up to do, as Mercedes is 3.2% short of 2025's mid-year tally. There are new and updated models coming soon, though, and that should help the brand overcome that deficit. With the way things are going, it probably won't be able to achieve its goal of 400,000 sales per year just yet, but the current upward trend is a promising sign, nonetheless.

With the current results, Mercedes-Benz sits in third in the luxury sales race. While BMW is pretty far ahead, Mercedes has a good shot at tying or even overtaking Lexus this year. It won't be easy, but that's motivation for the German automaker to try even harder this third quarter.

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