One in 10 BMWs Sold in 2025 Was an M Model

BMW has just become the latest manufacturer to reveal its 2025 earnings and sales figures, and unlike plenty of other European companies like Volkswagen and Mercedes, it has a pretty upbeat outlook on things.

Despite the usual talk of tariff headwinds and intense market competition in China, the group, consisting of BMW and its motorbike division, Mini and Rolls-Royce, recorded a 7.7% profit margin – exactly the same as it did in 2024. Overall, it made a net profit of over €7 billion (around $8 billion), with some of that stability not necessarily coming from where you’d expect.

M Breaks Records Again

The big headline from the earnings report, at least from an enthusiast point of view, is something we already had wind of earlier this year – that the popularity of BMW’s M models is growing and growing. In 2025, 213,449 of the 2,169,739 cars sold under the BMW brand came from its high performance division. That makes it the 14th year in a row that the division has had its best-ever sales year, and means that one in every 10 BMWs sold was an M model.

Some of this can be put down to the fact that the M range is fairly broad these days, incorporating several SUVs as well as the traditional coupes and sedans, and also encompasses not-quite-full-fat M models like the M340i and X3 M50. However, what is clear is that the best-selling full-on M models were the M2 and M3 families – great news for fans of the division’s traditional six-cylinder coupes and sedans.

EVs Grow Too

Despite the constant talk of slow electric car demand across the industry, BMW increased its sales share of full EVs in 2025. Across its three brands, it sold 442,056 electric vehicles in 2025, a 3.6% increase on 2024, and representing 17.9% of its total sales. Full EVs comfortably outsold plug-in hybrids too, of which the group sold 200,015.

With an onslaught of EVs coming over the next few years, spearheaded by the new iX3, don’t be at all surprised to see that balance tip even further in EVs’ favor in the near future. Mini is also doing much of the heavy lifting here, with one in three of the brand’s sales now made up of EVs.

Americas and Europe Compensate for China

There’s not a European brand to be found that’s not facing a struggle in China at the moment thanks to a combination of a weakening market and growing competition from local brands, and BMW was no exception, recording a fairly painful 12.5% sales drop there in 2025 compared with 2024.

However, that drop was offset by success in other regions, with sales growing by 7.3% in Europe and 5.6% in the Americas. This was doubtless helped by the fact that BMW builds several of its wildly popular SUVs for the US market (and lots of others) at its Spartanburg, South Carolina plant, making it less vulnerable to tariffs than other European brands.

What’s Next?

BMW, like pretty much every other car brand, expects to face much of the same challenges in 2026 as it did in 2025, namely the impact of tariffs and continued struggles in China. To offset this, it plans to make cuts in material and R&D costs, but has no plans to slow down its product launch: throughout the year, it has plans for no fewer than 40 all-new or refreshed models, including new generations of the all-important 3 Series and X5, and beginning with the new i3 next week – and given its ongoing success, we can expect a whole lot more from the M division too.

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