海角大神

Audi has a long-standing goal of becoming the world鈥檚 number one luxury automaker, and for the past few years it looked like the four-ring brand was well on its way to achieving this.

Last year, Audi sold just over 1.3 million vehicles worldwide, beating rival Mercedes-Benz (1.26 million) and closing the gap on BMW (1.38 million sales).聽 For Audi, that represented a 19.2-percent gain over the prior year, compared to 12.8-percent for BMW and a modest 8-percent for Mercedes Benz.

Now comes word from聽Bloomberg聽that Mercedes-Benz may overtake Audi for the number two position in 2015. Forecasts from the Center of Automotive Research at the University of Duisberg-Essen have BMW selling 1.76 million vehicles in 2015, followed by Mercedes Benz (1.68 million) and Audi (1.63 million).

How accurate any long-term forecasts are in the automotive industry is the subject of much debate, but Mercedes-Benz is clearly taking steps to combat sales gains by Audi. Over the next few years, Mercedes-Benz is launching a plethora of new global vehicles, primarily in the small car segment.

There鈥檚 the聽new A-Class, a聽new B-Class, the聽CLA four door coupe聽(smaller brother to the CLS 550) and even a new compact crossover called the GLA Class. Priced right, these models have the potential of boosting Mercedes-Benz鈥檚 sales above those of Audi聽 in the coming years.

Of course Audi isn鈥檛 standing idly by, either. Expect to see聽the new Q3 crossover聽in the coming months, followed by a new聽compact crossover dubbed the Q2. Then there鈥檚 the new A3 wagon to consider, which will be followed by an聽all-new A3 sedan.

It may not be perfectly clear which company will take the sales lead in three years time, but this much is obvious: with so much new product to choose from, luxury car shoppers are the real winners.聽