car sales arena An exclusive AID investigation reveals that of late Audi’s grip on the hotly contested global prestige sector car market has weakened in the face of a bullish onslaught from its hard battling Mercedes rival. Maintaining its hot streak as the fastest-growing carmaker in the world’s still expanding prestige car segment, and judged on recent form, AID’s forecasters now believe that Mercedes could soon topple Audi as the world’s second biggest prestige carmaker.