Only the luxury carmakers Lamborghini and Bentley and the South American commercial vehicle brand Volkswagen Truck & Bus recorded a decline in sales, as the Wolfsburg-based carmaker announced on Friday. Overall, the Group's sales increased by just under twelve percent to a good 9.2 million vehicles last year. VW CEO Oliver Blume said that it was positive that all major brands and all regions were growing. He added that his company was well positioned for the current year with numerous new products despite ongoing challenges.

Among the brands, Seat/Cupra stood out in particular with an increase in sales of a good third, followed by Skoda with a plus of 18.5 percent and Audi with a plus of 17.4 percent. The commercial vehicle division with its main product, the VW Bus, sold almost a quarter more vehicles. The core brand VW - which alone accounts for more than half of total sales - achieved an increase of 6.7 percent. However, the sports car manufacturer Porsche felt the effects of the weakness in China and sold only 3.3 percent more cars than in the previous year.

Sales of larger commercial vehicles also increased. Traton sold almost eleven percent more trucks and buses than a year ago. A better supply of parts at MAN played a particularly important role here: the German brand achieved an increase of a good third. In 2022, MAN's production lines stood idle for weeks due to a shortage of wiring harnesses from the Eastern European country following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.

(Report by Christina Amann, edited by Ralf Banser. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at Berlin.Newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or Frankfurt.Newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets)