Car maker BMW is set to break a worldwide sales record this year, writes David Duffy.

Fuelled by the success of the 3 Series and the X5 sports activity vehicle the car group, which is building the new Mini at Cowley, has already sold more than 683,000 vehicles worldwide.

In October, more than 66,000 cars were delivered, an increase of 8.6 per cent compared with the same month last year.

Sales director Michael Ganal said: "The BMW Group is moving steadily towards record sales worldwide. In many markets, we have been able to supply more vehicles to customers in the first ten months of the year than in the whole of the 1999 business year."

This success is largely due to the BMW 3 Series, with over 430,000 cars being sold as of October, an increase of 13.2 per cent, and the BMW Sports Activity Vehicle X5, well over 26,000 of which have already been sold this year.

Dr Ganal said the success of this vehicle would be even greater, but production capacity had been completely exhausted.

BMW sales in Germany continued in October to buck the negative trends of the market as a whole.