Sales of premium large SUVs in Europe declined in 2017 after three consecutive years of explosive growth during which 100,000 annual sales were added. A lack of new products may be responsible for the slowdown which caused sales to slip 6% to 270,000 units, or 1.7% of the overall European car market, down from 1.9% in 2016. The entire top-5 is down for the year and only 6 out of the 19 players in this class improve their volume this year. As you can read below, 2018 promises to bring a lot of news again so growth is expected to pick back up again.
Class leader BMW X5 moves with the segment at -7%, maintaining its share at 12.8% and keeping distance to its closest rivals, the Volvo XC90 and Audi Q7 which were both in their second full year, compared to the X5 which is in its last full year. The XC90 was the best seller in the fourth quarter, allowing it to reclaim the #2 spot from the Q7. Likewise, the Mercedes-Benz GLE managed to finish the year ahead of the Range Rover Sport thanks to an excellent fourth quarter, even though both models lost more than the segment average. The new generation Land Rover Discovery more than tripled its volume in Q4 and grew by 29% for the year to reach the highest volume for the nameplate since 2007.
