Mercedes-Benz on Tuesday unveiled its luxury mid-size business saloon, the new E-class, at a media preview event at Wangsan Marina, Incheon, setting a goal of taking the top spot in sales here in 2016.

The Korean unit of the German luxury carmaker has high hopes for the 10th generation of its best-selling luxury mid-size executive sedan. The new E-Class is the best in the segment in terms of performance, consumption and efficiency, the company added. 

According to the company’s data, about 90,630 units of E-Class have been sold in Korea since 2003. In 2015, the carmaker sold a record high of 18,748 E-Class cars, making Korea the third biggest market for E-Class in the world.

“The company could face (the) limit of production, a typical challenge ahead of a new car, but we are expecting to sell the new E-Class cars as much as we did last year,” said Mercedes-Benz Korea CEO Dimitris Psillakis.

His confidence in market demand is based on preorders that reached up to 4,000 units in a week.

“It is (a number) twice bigger than that for the previous E-Class in the same period,” he said.

If the preorder leads to real sales, market watchers said Mercedes-Benz can overtake BMW, a long time winner in the imported car market, in sales by the end of this year for the first time in Korea.

The price of the 2.0-liter diesel engine-loaded Mercedes-Benz latest E-Class ranges between 65.6 million won ($55,075) and 78.7 million won. The first delivery of the new E-Class is expected to take place at the end of June, the company said.

By Seo Jee-yeon (jyseo@heraldcorp.com)