Bucking the prevailing trend of diminishing new car sales, Germany’s Volkswagen announced today that its year-to-date global sales are up 3.9 percent over last year’s numbers. Primarily buoyed by China, Brazil, Russia and eastern Europe, Volkswagen managed to eke out a 0.7 percent growth in the month of September.

VW’s operations chief, Detlef Wittig, said that the automaker is on track to sell more cars in 2008 than it did last year, even as it and other automakers are cutting back production and reducing expectations for the rest of the year.

Still, VW’s chief executive, Martin Winterkorn, told the Associated Press that 2009 is unlikely to hold the same rosy picture.

“We don’t know the full impact on our business yet, but VW is doing better than the competition so far,” he said.