June 3 (Bloomberg) -- Bayerische Motoren Werke AG’s U.S. chief said its BMW brand, leading Toyota Motor Corp.’s Lexus in U.S. sales through May, has a “good opportunity” to unseat the Japanese automaker as the top seller of luxury autos.

“It is a good opportunity for us to obtain No. 1 this year,” Jim O’Donnell, president of BMW of North America LLC, said in a Bloomberg Television interview today. “I think there is a good possibility that we will do that.”

Lexus has held the top spot in annual U.S. luxury sales since 2000. A loss of that ranking would be another blow for Toyota City, Japan-based Toyota, which posted its first full- year loss in 59 years for the period that ended in March.

The namesake brand of Munich-based BMW in May outsold the Toyota division for a third straight month, 18,383 to 16,922. So far this year, the BMW lead is 76,819 to 73,186, according to the companies’ reports.

“Lexus tends to be more of a family-oriented buyer, versus some of the BMW buyers that might skew a little bit toward the empty nesters that are at a different place on the wealth curve,” said Craig Johnson, president of retail-consulting firm Customer Growth Partners LLC in New Canaan, Connecticut.

The top ranking in the U.S. has “never been our goal,” Mark Templin, manager of the Lexus brand, said on a conference call yesterday. He declined to comment about BMW outselling the Toyota division so far this year.

‘Wallets Closed’

BMW’s U.S. sales in May fell 28 percent from a year earlier, while Lexus’s declined 36 percent. BMW’s U.S. unit is based in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey. Toyota’s is in Torrance, California.

Total U.S. sales of luxury autos slid 32 percent last month as unemployment was at the highest rate since 1983. The sales are down 35 percent this year through May, according to Autodata Corp., based in Woodcliff Lake.

Buyers of luxury goods generally “are keeping their wallets closed right now,” Johnson said. “Any kind of discretionary spending is down at multiyear lows, and luxury seems to be taking it in the chops these days.”

Toyota’s American depositary receipts fell $2.05, or 2.5 percent, to $78.94 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. BMW declined 38 cents, or 1.4 percent, to 27.11 euros in Frankfurt.

To contact the reporters on this story: Alex Ortolani in Southfield, Michigan, at aortolani1@bloomberg.net; Greg Miles in New York at gmiles1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 3, 2009 16:17 EDT