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Bumper sales year for automotive manufacturers (Part 2)…. and one very dark cloud

What you can have, I can have better. It's not enough to be able to afford a Rolls-Royce, bespoke content is the means by which buyers of the luxury marque outdo each other.

Continuing on our round up of car manufacturers' sales figures for 2012 as more and more automotive companies announce their year end results.

Rolls-Royce announces its highest worldwide annual sales in its 108 year history. It seems that garden variety Rolls-Royce just weren't cutting it for the 2012 Rolls-Royce buyers – bespoke content was also at its highest-ever levels. Rolls-Royce lays claim to being the market leader in the luxury car market (defined as cars selling at 200,000 Euros and above). A number of markets reported record sales including Saudi Arabia (up 63%) and Germany (up 15%). Rolls-Royce largest market is the US followed by China.

Peugeot UK and Nissan UK both lay claim to growth on 2011. Peugeot UK's sales were up 5.6% on the previous year with small cars (107, 207 and 208) up 11.2% on 2012 . 2012 was a record year for Nissan UK with sales up 9.9% on 2011. Fleet sales were at their strongest ever for Nissan UK who now have 4.8% of the fleet market share.

Audi's global sales are up up 11.7% on 2011 from the sale of 1,455,100 cars. This surpasses its annual target of 1.4 million cars. North America and Asia were the areas of strongest growth for the carmaker.

In 2012, Maserati recorded a 2.2% increase on sales around the world compared to 2011 with the sale of 6,307 cars worldwide,. The largest sales were in North America (USA and Canada) where sales grew 17.3% on the year before, followed by China with 930 units (15% up) and Japan with 294 cars (5% increase). Sales in North America have doubled since 2009.

Meanwhile at Honda UK, poor sales will result in the loss of 800 jobs at the Swindon plant that assembles cars for the European market. Honda has yet to post details of its global sales in 2012. In this instance, no news may well be bad news for the brand.

However, Jaguar Land Rover has announced the creation of 800 new jobs at their factory in Solihull, Birmingham to cope with a 30% increase in global sales so all may not be lost for retrenched Honda workers, 140km south in Swindon.