It was a sad year for Toyota in Singapore this year when the figures came out. BMW has popped the Japanese car maker off its throne after 9 years and taken the top spot, being the best selling car brand here.

Second place went to Mercedes Benz and Toyota came in a shy third place with their sales shrinking to nearly half at 3562. The main cause for this shift in the car sales arena was the limitation of COEs last year which triggered tougher competition and edged the COE premiums upwards, and in a market like that, the premium car makers like BMW and Mercedes tend to fair better because their consumer base are less sensitive to the price changes and the car makers can squeeze out more profit margins to outbid competitors for the COEs. Needless to say, the natural disasters in Japan and Thailand had affected Toyota greatly while BMW surged ahead in terms of global sales as well, delivering 1.38 million cars, up by 12.8%.

Interestingly, Porsche though outside the top 10, posted an increase in sales of 30.4% to 584 cars and it is partly due to the new merger between Porsche Financial Services and Hong Leong Finance which allows buyers of the newly launched 911 or any other Porsche to pay a downpayment of as low as $1. This places Hong Leong Finance as the leading finance company here which will most probably solidify the advantage that the German carmakers have here.