Mercedes-Benz USA reported its best September on record with sales of 22,459 new vehicles, an increase of 13 pct over last September.

This company said this brings its year-to-date sales to 180,265, a 1.8 pct increase over the same period in 2006.

During its first full month on the market, the company said sales of the new 2008 C- Class boosted the volume-leading model line by 42.8 pct.

Other highlights for the month included a 14 pct jump in car sales, which was achieved in part by increases by not only the C-Class, but also the E-Class, up 21.4 pct, the CLK coupes and convertibles, up 29.5 pct, and the CL-Class coupe, up by 575.6 pct.

DaimlerChrysler AG’s Mercedes Car Group, the world’s second-biggest maker of luxury vehicles, said it reduced costs by 7.1 billion euros ($10 billion) in the last three years as part of a program to boost profitability.

“Our cost situation was not good when we began this program,” Rainer Schmueckle, chief operating officer of Mercedes, told journalists today at the company’s Stuttgart, Germany, headquarters. “We had quality problems. We needed to do something.”

The CORE program, implemented by former Mercedes head Eckhard Cordes in 2005, was designed to improve productivity and reduce the complexity as well as the number of parts that were involved in building Mercedes-Benz brand vehicles. Chief Executive Officer Dieter Zetsche aims to raise Mercedes’s profit as a percentage of sales to “at least” 10 percent by 2010 and surpass competitor Bayerische Motoren Werke AG in deliveries.