Mercedes' U.S. Sales Rose 4% in Q3 on a 47% S-Class Jump — but the Year Is Still Down
Mercedes-Benz USA sold 76,200 passenger cars in the third quarter, its sedans grew fastest, and the brand still trails BMW and Lexus with sales down 1% for the year.
Mercedes-Benz USA sold 76,200 passenger cars in the third quarter, up 4% from a year earlier, and its most expensive sedans did a lot of the work. S-Class sales rose 47% and the E-Class gained 39%, the company said on Oct. 7, in a market that barely moved. The catch: Mercedes is still down 1% for the year.
The figures arrived almost a week after its main rivals reported, and they don't change the order at the top of the U.S. luxury market. BMW brand sales rose 3.4% to 100,210 over the same three months, and Lexus sold 93,056, as covered in our breakdown of BMW's third-quarter U.S. sales.
Where the growth came from
Mercedes splits its U.S. lineup into three tiers, and all of them grew. The Core group, which takes in every C- and E-Class derivative, including the GLC and GLE SUVs, rose 12%. Mercedes says the Alabama-built GLE is up by double digits through September and the GLC is up for the year, but it doesn't publish model-level unit figures.
In the Top-End tier, the S-Class surge lines up with the rollout of the updated sedan, which debuted in January, and Maybach sales are up 21% year to date. Entry models rose 3%, led by a 63% jump for the GLA. That is the outgoing generation: the new GLA went into production in Germany last month and won't reach U.S. buyers until late 2027.
Vans added 9,600 units, up 1%, bringing the quarterly total to 85,800, up 3%.
Why the year is still negative
The third quarter extends a steady climb. Total MBUSA sales went from 78,500 in the first quarter to 84,500 in the second and 85,800 in the third. That still hasn't erased a softer first half: through September, passenger car sales stand at 221,200, down 1%, while BMW is up 4.3% for the year. For scale, Mercedes retailed 303,200 passenger cars in the U.S. in all of 2025.
The wider market offered little lift. J.D. Power and GlobalData forecast third-quarter industry sales down about 0.5%, and our Q3 2026 sales winners and losers found hybrids, not EVs, behind most of the gains. Mercedes' U.S. report doesn't break out electric sales at all.
The global picture is different. Mercedes-Benz Group says its battery-electric sales across cars and vans rose 52%, even as total deliveries fell 6% to 491,700. The demand it highlights is in Europe, where the company says the new electric GLC, CLA, GLB and GLA are sold out for the rest of the year.
What comes next
MBUSA chief executive Adam Chamberlain is counting on new products to keep the momentum going, naming the redesigned GLE and GLS and the new S-Class. The GLE and GLS made their world premiere in Tuscaloosa on March 31, when the plant built its five-millionth vehicle, and Mercedes plans to put $4 billion of more than $7 billion in planned U.S. investment through 2030 into the Alabama site, according to its premiere release.
The other piece is the electric GLC, priced from $63,500 in the U.S. Mercedes hasn't said how many it expects to sell here. Mercedes' earlier quarterly reports are on its U.S. sales page.
