Following the news earlier this week premium brand Audi had hiked its 2014 sales target to about 1.4m, parent Volkswagen Group announced a 6.5% rise in deliveries to the end of August, to 6.52m vehicles.

August sales rose 2.7% to 740,500 units worldwide.

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[Group] deliveries developed well in the first eight months. However, the economic environment in some world markets remains tense,” sales chief Christian Klingler said in a statement.

Western Europe (excluding Germany) sales rose 8.2% to 1.31m, Germany was up 6.5% to 757,300 but, though  Central and Eastern Europe volume rose 3.2% sales dived 11.6% in Russia.

North American sales fell 1.8% to 583,300 and were down 22.2% to 471,700 in South America.

Chinese sales rose 16.5% to 2.4m.