Dismal U.S. Sales for BMW, Lexus and Mercedes in February

(MoneyWatch)  The leading luxury import brands, BMW, Lexus and Mercedes-Benz are falling nearly as much as the rest of the U.S. market, as high-end buyers are sitting on their wallets, too.

In February, BMW sales fell 37.5 percent from the year-ago month; Lexus dropped 38.4 percent; Mercedes-Benz fell 23.5 percent, according to AutoData Corp. The drop in leasing presents a special challenge to luxury imports, which have relied heavily on leasing in recent years, led by BMW.

Jim O'Donnell, president of BMW of North America, said in a written statement that BMW is expecting a large number of returning lease customers this year. It's BMW's "challenge and opportunity" to retain those customers, he said.

That's going to be harder, because BMW and brands across the board are trying to cut back on cut-rate leasing, which is expensiveto support, and also represents an open-ended risk tied to the value of cars and trucks coming back from leases.

At first in the present recession, luxury imports outperformed the rest of the market by a wide margin. Through July 2008, Mercedes-Benz sales for the year were still 2.3 percent ahead of the year-ago period, even though BMW and Lexus were already down for the year.

But like the mass market, the falloff for luxury import brands has accelerated since last fall. Among other luxury and near-luxury imports: Acura fell 41.5 percent in February. Audi, which outperformed the market in 2008, dropped 24.4 percent in February. Infiniti fell 36.8 percent for the month. Porsche fell 11.5 percent.

Ultraluxury brands Bentley, Ferrari and Lamborghini also fell in February, AutoData said. On the domestic side, Cadillac sales fell 51.2 percent in February. Lincoln sales dropped 41.2 percent.

Today's Wall Street Journal correctly noted that luxury brands are falling, but stated as a truism that luxury brands historically are "less affected by economic downturns than the rest of the auto industry."

In fact, luxury brands fell even lower than the rest of the U.S. industry in the early 1990s. It would be better to say that the timing of a recession is what's different for luxury imports. They tend to be "last in, first out' of a recession, but right now, they're very much "in."