The Beamers win: BMW has earned the honor of being the top-selling luxury brand of car in the US for 2011, reports the Wall Street Journal. It takes the title from Toyota's Lexus, which had dominated for a decade but never quite recovered from the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan. This year it came down to BMW and Mercedes-Benz, and the crown was so coveted that neither side wanted to report first, notes Bloomberg. Finally, Mercedes announced sales this morning of 245,192. BMW followed a few hours later and beat the total by about 2,700 vehicles. (More luxury car stories.)