Audi has finished the first quarter of 2005 with a new record for vehicle sales.

A total of 195,044 new cars were sold worldwide, an increase of 1.8 percent on the previous year’s high figure (first quarter of 2004: 191,560).

Ralph Weyler, Member of the Board for Marketing and Sales at AUDI AG has announced, “We are clearly on course for a new record year.”

In Australia, Audi has achieved outstanding sales growth of 63 percent over the same period last year with 1,151 vehicles sold from 1st January to 31st March 2005 (March YTD 2004: 704).

Strong growth was also achieved in Europe, at 9.8 percent. Some individual markets clearly bettered this. For example, sales in Great Britain were up by 10.2 percent to 25,724, in Spain by 21.6 percent to 14,395, in France by 24.2 percent to 10,090 and in Belgium by 39.6 percent to 7,547 units.

High increases were also recorded in Eastern Europe with the sales volume in Russia, for example, expanded by 48.8 percent to 1,225 new cars. Sales in Germany were up by 1.8 percent to 56,141 units, clearly defying the general market trend.

In addition to Australia, another market in which Audi recently set up its own importer company is South Korea, a country which also set a new sales record.