gengar

And again, so what's the relevance of this to the claimed direction of luxury manufacturers in the OP. especially in the context of top end marques that 60% of owners lease and have actually not increased in price after factoring in inflation? That was my point, not that there may or may not be income inequality.

Och

iTrader: (3)

Even if you are poor to the point that you can only afford a basic car, that car is still likely to be awesome compared to basic cars of 20 years ago, and not anymore expensive if you lease.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

that's not the point. obviously the cheapest econobox today is better than many mainstream vehicles of 20 years ago. things get better (value).

the point is, or rather, what i believe i have observed, is that more car makers are offering more models with more options (to raise prices still higher) at prices that most people (90%+) can never afford, leased or purchased.

e.g., porsche, which 20 (or maybe more) years ago didn't have panamera, didn't have cayenne, maybe didn't have cayment, and certainly didn't have as many variants of all their models, a whole bunch of which are now in 6 figures.

another example would be bmw, which now has TONS more models in 6 figures than decades past when pretty much it was SL and S class and that was it.

Och

iTrader: (3)

I still don't see where the split is. Yeah, makers have more high end models, but they also have more affordable models as well. Automotive market evolves and expands, and things have never been better for the consumer at any level.

In the last two decades cars have not gone up in price at all, if you adjust for inflation, and even became more affordable if you factor in awesome lease offers. All that while greatly improving and adding tons of features.

The one thing that I wonder about, is how long are those low lease rates are going to last? I mean you can get a 40k Q40 for $300 a month or 50k 328xi for $400 a month. Who is buying these cars 3 years later, when they are beat up, their tech is outdated, but only a small fraction of their price was paid off during the lease term?

mmarshall

All that equipment is going into today's cars for two reasons.....either prospective buyers/customers WANT it and are demanding it, or the government is forcing it added because of safety reasons. Of course it raises car prices (no one is arguing that).....but those vehicles are selling despite higher prices today. People are willing to pay for what they want in a vehicle....and those who aren't (or can't because of financial reasons) usually wind up in the used-car market.