With a little more than a million cars sold in 2010, Audi booked a record profit of $3.65 billion. That’s $3,348 per car. Now you know why they are so expensive. GM made $4.7 billion last year on 8,389,769 cars. That’s $560 per car. Now you know why they are so cheap. You think that’s an unfair comparison? Not so: Audi’s secret to success is the same as GM’s: China.
In China, Audi barely missed outselling the home market Germany – by 1,000 cars, says Automobilwoche [sub]. This will most likely change. A lot of Chinese are still waiting for their Q series SUVs to arrive. This year, Audi plans to sell 1.2 million cars worldwide, with most of the growth coming from China.
“At the moment the only thing the competition (in China) is doing is chasing after us, and we expect it will stay that way,” Audi CEO Rupert Stadler told Reuters today.
Audi is Volkswagen’s cash cow. Audi’s operating margin is enormous: 9.4 percent. Mercedes made 8.7 percent last year, BMW is expected to report less than 7.7 percent.
the difference lies in Audi’s aspirational marketing vs GM’s distress mess and incentive insanity. oh for the day when “Wouldn’t you really rather have a Buick?” meant something.
GM has no one who has ever sold cars, has no clue about automotive retail and worse yet, is so insulated and egotistical that they refuse to listen to their top salesman of all time. GM will never prosper in the USA until they totally and completely clean house and fumigate the place.
Interesting Jaguar Land Rover are heading for a profit of about 1.5 billion USD on 1/4 of Audi’s sales volumes. Put’s Ford’s decision to sell into perspective.
I guess the Ford decision was driven out of a more short term perspective and need for cash to avoid bancruptcy proceedings in a very down market. Less of a long term doubt in the abilities of tthose brands.
For comparison purposes however, remember that the 3.65 billion $ Audi reported are after-tax profits. They made 3.3 billion €, so about 4.5 billion dollar, in operating profit (most likely identical to EBIT). Don’t know what the reported JLR numbers are in, though TATA iirc likes to quote EBITDA numbers…
At the time they sold JLR, fuel prices we’re about at their all time high and people we’re dumping their SUVs for chump change, partly because of said fuel prices but mostly because public opinion turned against these fuel inefficient cars. That means they sold Land Rover at exactly the time when none of the Western manufacturers wanted to be associated with these big heavy SUVs.
No doubt they wish they hadn’t sold it now…IIRC they got about $2bn for it.
Precisely. Lincoln was ‘saved’ instead.
Still Ford was short sighted to sell especially since they had credit.
Jaguar is known around the world and is a luxury make – Lincoln not so much!
you guys are being hard on GM
audi is the designer label or the high end boutique restaurant
GM is McDonalds
billions served and of course each profit margin is tiny
I wonder what’s the margin on R8.