BMW group vehicle sales fall 8.3 pct in October

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Sales at BMW (BMWG.DE), the world's largest premium carmaker, fell 8.3 percent in October to 113,005 vehicles, as weakness in the U.S. and western Europe outweighed growth in emerging markets. "We have adjusted our production output to reflect the market and remain focused on balancing supply and demand in the forthcoming months," BMW sales chief Ian Robertson said in a statement.

BMW brand sales fell 9.2 percent to 95,502 vehicles, while Mini sales dipped 3.4 percent to 17,385 cars due to the planned changeover in the cabrio model scheduled to hit dealerships in the first half of next year.

The group posted growth of 10 percent in India, 36 percent in China and 40 percent in Russia but that could not make up for declines of 12 percent in western Europe, 5 percent in the U.S. and 29 percent in Japan.

Group sales in the year to date inched up 0.7 percent to nearly 1.23 million vehicles world-wide, with a 10.5 percent rise in demand for Minis just tipping the scales against a 1.1 percent decline for the BMW brand.

"Faced with the extremely challenging conditions in the automotive markets, we no longer expect to exceed last year's record sales for the full year," Robertson added.

On Tuesday, BMW scrapped its already revised pretax profit forecast, preferring only to say that earnings would still be clearly positive before tax. It also said vehicle sales this year would fall for the first time since 1993 after adjusting to exclude its former Rover subsidiary.

Domestic rival Mercedes-Benz, owned by Daimler (DAIGn.DE), is expected to report its monthly sales figures later on Friday.

(Reporting by Christiaan Hetzner, editing by Will Waterman)