SANTA MONICA, Calif. -

Edmunds.com sifted through 2010 sales data to see which brand sold the most luxury units. Turns out, the brand that topped the charts for the eighth consecutive year was Lexus.

But site officials discovered European competitors BMW and Mercedes-Benz closed the gap by enough last year that both brands could be poised to make a run at the top spot in 2011.

Edmunds.com calculated that Toyota-owned Lexus sold almost 230,000 units last year, out-pacing both BMW (220,000) and Mercedes-Benz (216,000). The site also determined Lexus’ ES sedan led the brand’s sales with 48,652 units — or 21 percent of all Lexuses sold in 2010.

Analysts also shared that the Lexus HS hybrid, meanwhile, was the brand’s fastest growing model last year with a 10.2-percent increase over 2009.

Meanwhile, Edmunds.com learned BMW’s 3 Series paced the brand’s second-place showing with 100,910 units sold, a 10.9-percent gain year-over-year. Furthermore, the site mentioned the Mercedes E-Class (60,922 units sold) was not only the brand’s top-selling model, but it was also its fastest growing with a jump of 41.4 percent.

Edmunds.com thinks a secret to Lexus’s 2010 success may lie in its incentive deals. The site found that while most luxury brands — including BMW and Mercedes — offered fewer discounts last year compared to 2009, Lexus actually increased its incentive offers.

Site analysis showed Lexus buyers received a discount of 11 percent, on average, off their new vehicles, the highest rate offered by the brand in the last decade.

“With fewer than 10,000 sales separating the top two brands, last year’s competition returned to the neck-and-neck race we saw between Lexus and BMW in 2008 before the economy turned sour,” explained Bill Visnic, senior editor for Edmunds.com’s sister site AutoObserver.com.

“The close finish suggests that the U.S. luxury sales crown this year is very much up for grabs,” Visnic surmised.

While the top three spots were taken by foreign nameplates, Edmunds.com learned that Cadillac was the top domestic brand on last year’s list and earned the title of fastest growing luxury brand overall in 2010. However, Cadillac placed a distant fourth with 147,000 units sold.

Edmunds.com indicated Cadillac’s new SRX crossover became the brand’s best-selling model with 51,094 sales, dethroning the CTS. The site conceded that Lincoln, America’s only other domestic luxury model division, placed well behind Cadillac with just below 86,000 sales in 2010.

Moving along, analysts declared that 2010 was also a milestone year for Volkswagen’s Audi, which cracked six figures in U.S. sales for the first time ever. They said sales of the growing German brand climbed to almost 102,000 units, with the popular Audi A4 model representing 36 percent of all Audis purchased

Wrapping up the report, Edmunds.com stated Honda’s Acura line also reinforced its solid market share, placing itself between Cadillac and Nissan’s Infiniti with 133,606 sales in 2010. The site noted the performance was led by an unlikely candidate in its luxury division: the Acura MDX crossover.

“For a brand that built its reputation on the values of light and sensibly sized cars, the bulky MDX has asserted itself as Acura’s best-selling model,” Visnic pointed out.