The car business is a tough one. Designing and engineering modern vehicles is hard enough, but you’ve also got to sell them, which is no easy task, either. Despite fierce global competition, Mercedes-Benz is having no issues moving the metal. This prestigious German luxury automaker just released its first-quarter U.S. sales figures and there’s a lot to look at.
Overall Performance Was A Mixed Bag
Overall, Mercedes-Benz sold some 75,100 new vehicles in the first three months of 2025. That works out to 64,700 passenger cars and 7,700 commercial vans. Curiously, the former grew by 1 percent compared to the first quarter of 2024, though van sales fell by a whopping 52 percent. Around 16,100 were delivered in the first quarter of 2024, though, as the automaker points out, Metris and Sprinter gas engines have been discontinued in the U.S., likely fueling – so to speak – this steep decline.
But it’s not all bad news in the van department. The all-electric eSprinter experienced a year-over-year sales increase of 253 percent, showing that commercial customers have growing interest in these versatile EVs.
- Mercedes-Benz sold 75,100 new vehicles in Q1 2025
- That includes 64,700 passenger cars and 7,700 vans
- Year over year, the former increased by 1 percent but the latter dropped 52 percent
Adding things up, the automaker sold 82,700 passenger vehicles and vans in the first quarter of 2024, and 75,100 during the same period in 2025. That’s a year-over-year decrease of around 9.2 percent. Unfortunately, the small increase in passenger vehicle sales was not enough to offset the drop in van deliveries.
“I am proud to see our teams and valued dealer partners continue to work together with an unwavering focus on the core of our business – our valued customers,” said Dimitris Psillakis, the president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz USA in a media release shared by the automaker. “We closed Q1 in a very strong position for wholesale group sales and celebrated our best-ever March in MBUSA’s history for retail sales,” the leader added.
A Deeper Dive Into The Numbers
Breaking things down a little further, sales of plug-in hybrids increased by a staggering 400 percent. According to Mercedes-Benz, “This was propelled by wider availability of five long-range models, alongside Mercedes-AMG high-performance hybrids, reinforcing the brand’s promise to provide the luxury of choice to customers.”
The brand’s entry-level offerings, the CLA and GLA, are both growing strongly. Deliveries of the former jumped by a whopping 103 percent, while the latter increased by 11 percent.
Mercedes-Benz’s core models – the C-Class, CLE, E-Class, CLS, GLC, GLE, and EQE – saw an overall sales increase of 8 percent in the first quarter of 2025. Of this cohort of cars, the GLC SUV and its Coupe variant led the field.
Similarly, deliveries of high-performance Mercedes-AMG models increased by 13 percent. Sales of the AMG GT shot up 32 percent, while year-over-year deliveries of the AMG SL leapt by a whopping 109 percent.
Global Sales Are Worth A Quick Mention, Too
Of course, the three-pointed star sells vehicles in more markets than just the U.S., and globally the Mercedes-Benz Group delivered 529,000 passenger vehicles and vans in the first quarter of 2025, some 446,300 of the former, and around 82,900 of the latter. That overall performance represents a year-over-year decline of 7 percent.
Mercedes-Benz sales varied significantly based on market. Passenger car deliveries in Europe declined 7 percent, falling 10 percent in the company’s home market of Germany. Similarly, the numbers were down 5 percent in Asia, dropping 10 percent in China. North American sales, however, grew 4 percent, while deliveries in other countries around the world increased 16 percent.
Unfortunately for the automaker’s vans, deliveries fell by double digits in nearly every global market, dropping 14 percent in Europe, 27 in Asia, 49 in North America, and 8 percent for the rest of the world.
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