Mercedes Wants To Double AMG Sales Proportion In America (To Catch Up With Canada)

Mercedes sells a lot of cars in the United States. More than any other luxury automaker, in fact – and many times more than it sells in Canada, at any rate. But there’s at least one way in which MBUSA wants to emulate its neighbors to the north, and that’s AMG.

Automotive News reports that roughly ten percent of the Mercedes sold in the United States last year were AMG performance models. In Canada, that number was more like 20 percent.

“Based on that, we have more opportunity,” MBUSA CEO Dietmar Exler told AN. Getting to that level may not happen so quickly, and may not happen at all. “But I know there is potential with AMG to go above what we have been.”

As it is, the Mercedes sold nearly 50 percent more AMG models in America last year than it did the year before. A big part of that came thanks to the mid-year introduction of the new 43 line to join the higher-end 63 and 65 models. They’ll now be available for the full model year, and soon be joined by the new hybrid 53 versions of the CLS and E-Class models as well.

Of course, in raw numbers, Mercedes sells far more models (AMG or otherwise) in the United States than it does in Canada – by a ratio of roughly 7.5:1. Last year Mercedes sold over 375,000 new vehicles in the US, and crested the 50,000-mark for the first time in Canada. That works out to roughly 37,500 AMG models in the 50 states compared to roughly 10,000 in Canada’s ten provinces (and three northern territories). The population of the US is nearly ten times as large as Canada’s.

If Mercedes could reach Canadian proportions in the US market, though, it would be looking at some 75,000 AMGs in the United States. That’s more than all the Porsches sold – or more than all the Bentleys, Jaguars, Alfa Romeos, and Maseratis put together – in America last year.