BMW managed to maintain its title of most popular luxury automotive brand in the world in 2014, with its sales for the year coming in at 1,811,719 cars, a substantial 9.5 percent increase on the 1,655,138 it sold the previous year. The 3-Series was by far the brand’s leading seller, with buyers all over the globe snapping up 476,792 examples.

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BMW was also the top luxury auto brand in the U.S., where 339,738 of its cars were sold. However, the biggest market for BMW was China, though no individual sales figure has been released.

Audi came in second with 1,741,100 sales worldwide in 2014, up 10.5 percent on the 1,575,500 it sold the previous year. As with BMW, China was the single biggest market for Audi.

And in third place was Mercedes-Benz, which sold 1,650,010 cars in 2014, a 12.9 percent increase on the previous year’s tally of 1,461,680 cars. The U.S. remains the top market for the Three-Pointed Star. Most of the growth was attributed to new entry-level models like the CLA-Class and GLA as well as the latest S-Class, the latter of which racked up more than 100,000 sales in its first year on the market.

The sales figures for all three brands were new records, highlighting the growing demand for luxury auto sales around the globe.

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By comparison, Cadillac sold 263,697 cars worldwide in 2014, a 5.2 percent increase on the 250,739 it sold the previous year. Infiniti also reported growth for the year, with its tally coming in at 186,200 cars, up 13.5 percent on the previous year. Of significant interest is the growth in sales Porsche experienced: it sold 189,850 in 2014, up 17 percent on the previous year's tally. The strong result was partially due to the new Macan, which Porsche said was sold to mostly new customers to the brand.

Figures for other mainstream global luxury auto brands such as Jaguar, Land Rover, Lexus, Maserati and Volvo are yet to be released.

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