North America's Jeep brand has rocked the German luxury-car establishment, selling a record number of Grand Cherokees last month โ and more than twice as many vehicles as its nearest rival.
Jeep Australia sold 501 new generation Grand Cherokees in August, well ahead of the nearest competition including the Audi Q5, BMW X1, X3 and X5, each of which notched up between 163 and 210 sales.
"It's a great result but we could have sold twice as many if we could get more cars," said Veronica Johns, general manager national sales, Jeep Australia. "We still have a target to try and crack 1000 in a month, but we need to get enough stock."
Jeep has a five month waiting list for the Grand Cherokee, depending on the model.
It's a familiar story. Audi is also faced with long queues for its Q5 luxury softroader.
Year-to-date to August, the Audi Q5 leads the luxury SUV pack (1930 sales, up 9.3 per cent), ahead of the BMW X5 (1795 sales, down 8.2 per cet), the Jeep Grand Cherokee (1557 sales, up 431 per cent from a low base), the BMW X1 (1521 sales, up 31 per cent), Mercedes-Benz M Class (1448 sales, down 11 per cent) and the Land Rover Discovery (1418 sales, up 20 per cent).
Luxury SUVs are bucking market trends.
Sales of all SUVs are stable (down 0.3 per cent year to date) but sales of luxury SUVs are up 20 per cent in the first eight months of the year, figures from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries show.