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Time for reflection.
Until a few years ago, extreme luxury cars were very rare in Spain - the terrain of football players, successful businessmen, and Arab Sheikhs with property on the coast of Malaga. However, nowadays things are very different.
It is now more common to see a Ferrari or an Aston Martin on Spain’s modern highways, and the select club of owners has grown considerably. The sector –that of luxury cars, yachts and private jets– is said to be oblivious to the crisis; that it evolves through force of habit regardless of how the withered automobile market is doing. But the data from the last few years suggests otherwise, at least with regard to Western markets.
In Spain, the crisis caused luxury car sales (those valued at more than 60,000 Euros) to drop by nearly 50% in 2008, similar to the rate reported in 2009, according to the data supplied by the Association of Car Manufacturers, (Anfac) and the Association of Car Dealers, (Ganvam).
Meanwhile, in the United States, historically considered the world’s biggest automobile market –although not any longer in absolute terms since it was overtaken by China in 2009– sales of this type of vehicles fell by 21% in 2008, to stand at 1.19 million units. According to the specialised firm, Autodata, sales did not exceed one million units in 2009, which is something that did not happen since 1996.
Analysts argue that, in some cases, the market is showing clear symptoms of saturation and that, in times of recession, people don’t renew their luxury vehicles as regularly as they would under normal conditions. In the specific case of Spain, for example, the fact that the number of wealthy persons (those who manage a wealth of more than one million dollars, excluding their first house and consumables) has also fallen considerably in 2008 and 2009, would justify this trend.
0.27% of the population
The annual global wealth report published jointly by Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management and Capgemini says that there were approximately 127,000 wealthy persons in Spain in 2008, 0.27% of the population.
The severity of the crisis also affects other areas, such as the recreational boat sector, which has suffered a serious downturn since the spring of 2008 (falling nearly 35% in 2009), according to the National Association of Sailing Companies (Anen). The tendency is similar in all the market segments, both in respect of sailing yachts and motor yachts. Everyone is in the same boat.
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Published in Cars, Ships and Aviation by Marco O. Brik on 08/03/2010
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