What do you buy when you're looking to upgrade from a Volkswagen GTI? Yes, there is the Golf R but this time around you've got more dough to spend and young children to drive around. Plus, you may want to drive something more mature. Mercedes-Benz recognized this market gap and its solution is the new CLA. Many in this industry questioned whether a front-wheel-drive Mercedes sedan (or four-door coupe) could hack it, let alone be interesting, but the CLA has so far been a huge success. And it's causing potential problems for BMW.

Mercedes has just expanded its US sales lead over BMW this past month and it has the CLA to thank for that. 3,623 CLAs were sold in its second full month of sales in the US. There was a total increase of 4,061 units, or a 13 percent, from a year earlier. This resulted in a November record of 34,376 sales, widening Mercedes' lead over BMW by 7,610 units. Only in October, that number was at 4,986 units. In other words, the CLA, if this trend continues, will help Mercedes take down BMW's two-year domination in annual US luxury sales. Analysts expect this sales trend to continue mainly because BMW has been quite slow to introduce its more affordable FWD models.