Audi’s massive model onslaught

Last year brought the first significant correction to the luxury segment since the global financial crisis. The top of the market faded by 6 per cent in a period where overall new-car sales leapt to record levels.

Audi, the fastest-growing premium automotive brand for most the last 15 years (in terms of market share), has had to deal with a sobering drop in sales levels in a softening luxury car market.

It has also had to watch tough premium-segment competitor Mercedes-Benz hold strong on the back of healthy sales of its more affordable smaller models.

This year to August, Audi has sold 13,042 vehicles to BMW’s 16,352 and rampant Mercedes-Benz’s 23,013,

Mercedes-Benz enjoyed its best year in Australia in 2017, selling close to one of every three luxury vehicles for a modest 3.1 per cent growth among its passenger vehicles and SUVs.

BMW plunged 15.7 per cent; Audi slipped 9.3 per cent after a hot sales streak of 12 years of consecutive growth, peaking in 2016 with 24,258 new registrations.

Until 2017, Audi in Australia had been powering along grandly, upping its sales and share with regular additions to its portfolio leading to a sales graph of impressive growth.

But with nothing much to shout about on the new-model front lately, Audi has been struggling. Now the Ingolstadt manufacturer is gearing up to fight back with a massive product-led resurgence as it regularly fires new metal into its showrooms across the next 12 months.

A new A7 arrives in November, followed by the new flagship Q8 SUV – a melding of luxury SUV and limousine - in December.

An all-new A6 executive saloon is scheduled for the first quarter of 2019, with the high performance RS 5 Sportback joining its coupe sibling in February

In the second quarter, the small A1 is replaced, followed mid year by the next-generation small Q3 SUV and bigger five-seater e-tron crossover, the first all-electric Audi.  Sized between the Q5 and Q7, it will go up against Tesla and the new Jaguar i-Pace.