Daimler denies report on internal sales targets

Daimler has denied a magazine report which claimed to publish the German carmaker's internal sales targets for its core Mercedes-Benz Cars division.

German weekly magazine Focus said on Friday, in a brief excerpt of a report, that the division aimed to grow sales by 6.9 percent to 1.55 million vehicles this year.

The report, citing internal targets, also said sales of Mercedes and Smart cars in the key Chinese market should jump roughly 30 percent to 274,000 vehicles this year.

"None of the figures correspond to our internal plan targets," a Daimler spokeswoman said, without giving details of the internal targets.

(Reporting by Christiaan Hetzner; Editing by Mark Potter)