Audi Under the Sign of the Five Rings: First-half Sales in Greece up 26 Percent

The Summer Olympics in Athens are about to begin, and Audi is likewise gearing up for a season of impressive exploits. Ludger Beerbaum, captain of the Audi quattro Team as well as his team colleagues Christian Ahlmann and Marco Kutscher have qualified for the show-jumping team. This means that three of the four German show-jumpers competing in Athens are members of the Audi quattro Team. It was established in 2001 to act as a springboard to help talented riders achieve top international standards. Beerbaum, four-time Olympic champion, remarked with pride: “I’d never have imagined this three years ago.”

If selling vehicles were an Olympic discipline, Audi would undoubtedly be among the leading contenders in Greece. The company with the four-ring badge succeeded in increasing vehicle sales for the period from January to June by 26 percent year on year, to a total of 3,228. The Audi A3 made a substantial contribution to this success, emerging as a top athlete in the country that gave the world the Olympic spirit: sales rose some 78 percent on the previous year, to 1,440 vehicles. “We are proud of the Audi brand’s success in Greece and are looking expectantly to the future,” remarked Ralph Weyler, AUDI AG Board Member for Marketing and Sales. Werner Eichhorn, Head of European Sales, added: “In September we’ll be launching the new Audi A3 Sportback, which is bound to be equally successful.”

The Audi A3 is claiming the honours not just in Greece, but in fact right across the Mediterranean, with impressive sales performances particularly in Turkey, Spain and Portugal. In Turkey, 778 Audi A3 cars were sold (235), with total sales on that market up 270 percent. In Portugal, sales of the Audi A3 reached 1,147, a rise of 106 percent. Audi posted year-on-year growth in the overall Portuguese market of 13.2 percent. In Spain, sales of the Audi A3 totalled 8,257, an increase of around 21 percent. Overall sales in Spain were up 12 percent in the first half of the year.