Auto Motor und Sport reports supercar sales jumped 45 percent between 2002 and 2007, to a record 165k units per year. The German buff book details a study by the Instituts für Automobilwirtschaft (IFA) at the Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Umwelt (HfWU) in Nürtingen-Geislingen. It estimates supercar sales will increase by another 20 percent to 200k units by 2015. The IFA says much of this growth will be driven by newly wealthy criminals and dictators status-seekers in emerging economies like Russia and China. It also credits (blames?) "the spiral of exclusivity." "Many premium manufacturers have lost exclusivity by widening their model ranges. The small-volume firms can offer the exclusivity that is so important for supercar buyers." So although the horsepower wars of the 1990s may have reached their zenith with the 1001 hp Veyron, we can expect a steady stream of four-wheeled unobtainium– with carbon tax surcharges greater than the GNP of Belize.
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Good time to find a job at: Ferrari, Porsche, Bugatti?, BMW, Lamborghini, Corvette division, TVR, Lotus…
I accept any test driver, callibration or road tester engineer position =). Design would also be nice.
Then I’d see nicer machinery than the one I currently deal with.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think the Veyron looks like a ’58 Edsel?
I don’t care how much HP it has, I’m not driving something that ugly.
Actually, what the piece suggests–“the spiral of exclusivity”–is that it might _not_ be a good time to go to work for Porsche, Corvette, Lotus or the like.
“Instituts für Automobilwirtschaft at the Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Umwelt in Nürtingen-Geislingen…”
God, German is an angry language…
Yet another statistic that lends credence to “The rich are getting richer, the poor stay the same and the middle class get wiped out.”
psarhjinian – too true. Sadly, the emerging economies are leaping directly to the ‘a few incredibly wealthy and many serfs’ model, skipping the ‘middle class era’ altogether.
NickR,
You think that lack of a middle class has anything to do with a lack of political freedom?
It’s interesting that of the three large emerging economies, India, China and Russia, the two authoritarian regimes (and it’s hard to describe Putin’s Russia any other way) have created oligarchies. India, though not a perfect democracy, seems to be doing a better job cultivating a substantial middle class.
One reason for the booming supercar and ultra luxury markets is that compared to a yacht, a private jet or another home, a $250,000 car is a cheap way of displaying wealth. Maybach is the only ultra luxury maker whose sales have not taken off in the past decade – the rest are all building and selling many more cars than they ever did before, with full order books.
Of course those full order books and higher build rates make the cars less exclusive. They’re selling thousands of Ferraris a year now. If you want cachet and not see a similar car in the country club lot, you need to go to boutique companies, not FerrariLamboAstonRollsBentley. Bentleys are so commonplace that a couple of weeks ago I saw two in one day here in the Motown ‘burbs.
This also explains the success of International’s XT line of heavy truck based luxury pickups. They’re less common than Bentleys.
You think that lack of a middle class has anything to do with a lack of political freedom?
It certainly does. The educated, empowered middle class is an historical aberration, and its definitely a barrier to the exertion of power. Weaken it, usually through fear or disenchantment, and it’s a lot easier to get things done.
The poor, as long as you don’t push them to desperation, can be marginalized or bought, the rich are players. The middle class, though, has the time and resources to meddle.
One of the reasons communism ought to work (but doesn’t) is because of this theory: everyone is bourgeousie, and everyone has both a voice and the time/resources to exercise it. The reason it doesn’t is because, practically, every communist state is really a cabal of rich, powerful people, and a lot of poor ones who barely scrape by.
China is the worst example of this: a supposedly communist state with state-sponsored robber barons. Driving Maybachs, no less.
@NickR: While political freedoms are still sadly lacking, Chinese middle class is grwoing at an astonishing rate. Just witness the increase in car ownership. The number of chinese people crossing the 10,000$ a year threshold (pretty middle class by Chinese standards) in the coming years is expected to be above 300m.
It’s really interesting that the only ones lamenting inequalities in developing countries due to globalisation are people living in wealthy western countries who feel threatened by new competition. Ask any chinese migrant worker if he would like to go back into his village, living hand-in-mouth and starving any time a bad harvest comes along, you would get a blank stare.
@RFortier1796: Angry maybe, but so precise…
Of course those full order books and higher build rates make the cars less exclusive. They’re selling thousands of Ferraris a year now.
Yeah, nobody buys those cars anymore–there are too many of them (with apologies to Yogi Berra)
It’s really interesting that the only ones lamenting inequalities in developing countries due to globalisation are people living in wealthy western countries who feel threatened by new competition.
Actually, I feel threatened by China’s determination to devour every living thing on the planet.