The world's leading luxury automaker, BMW, has seen record sales in July as deliveries gained 7.6 percent on the year to 129,094 vehicles owing to "substantial gains in many markets."

So far this year, the BMW group, which also owns the Mini and Rolls-Royce brands, has delivered 962,468 vehicles, an increase of 17.9 percent, a statement said.

According to Sales Director Ian Robertson; "We have just reported the most successful July sales ever and we are well on our way to achieving our recently announced target of over 1.6 million vehicles in 2011, the best ever sales result for the BMW group".

Substantial increases were observed in China and the United States, two of BMW's main markets, along with jumps in Brazil, India, Russia and South Korea.

In Germany, a total of 23,212 new BMW and Mini vehicles were registered in July 2011, around the same number as the previous year of 23,397 / -0.8%. The slower pace could be attributed to the changes in BMW's line up, including the changeover from the first generation BMW 1 Series to the second generation.

For the BMW brand, the highest growth in sales was the BMW X3, which sold 9,762 units in July, bringing the total number of BMW X3 vehicles sold in the first seven months to 63,284 (prev. yr. 28,165 / +124.7%).