Why didn't anyone buy Bentley or Rolls-Royce?

As an entry-level ultraluxury brand, Porsche's sales in China in 2023 fell by 15% compared to the same period last year.

But it's not just Porsche that's declining, but also Bentley, Ferrari and Rolls-Royce, and the sales of these real ultra-luxury brands in China have fallen even more.

In 2023, the most sold ultra-luxury brand in the Chinese market was Bentley, with a total of 3,480 units sold. It looks like a lot, but if you look at the sales volume in 2022 year-on-year, Bentley's sales in 2023 will decline by 15% year-on-year, and the Chinese market has become one of the markets with the most obvious decline in Bentley's car sales.

Looking at Rolls-Royce, which has a strong reputation in the wedding car industry, its domestic sales have declined for two consecutive years, and it will decline by 12% year-on-year in 2023. Ferrari, Aston Martin, and Lamborghini, which are well-known in the supercar circle, will also see their sales decline in 2023. For the first time in three years, Ferrari's sales in China fell in China, and China became its only segment, while Lamborghini's sales in China fell 17% year-on-year, from the second largest market to third, and Aston Martin, the biggest decliner, fell 31% year-on-year.

There is a phenomenon in economics that the consumption of luxury goods will increase significantly when the overall economy is in a recession. Because of masks, in 2019-2022, which is generally considered to be difficult, although the sales of various brands in the ultra-luxury market have fluctuated, they have maintained an upward trend overall.

Especially in 2021, the overall sales volume of the ultra-luxury market can almost be described as skyrocketing, with a year-on-year increase of 33%. But in 2023, the overall sales volume of the ultra-luxury market has dropped by 14%.

We all know that the user groups that can buy ultra-luxury brands belong to the owners who are not bad for money, and the economic strength of most of them is basically not affected by the economic environment. So, flaunting wealth can happen in any economic environment. The decline in sales of ultra-luxury brands will not mean that the rich have become pragmatic, let alone that the rich have no money to buy cars.

The only possible reason is that traditional ultra-luxury brands have lost their appeal to the wealthy in China.

We all know that the mentality of buying an ultra-luxury brand is nothing more than playing with the car, enjoying, the identity blessing brought by the brand and the topicality, and the price is often not the most important. And now the first two are in today's new energy, and the rich have lost interest.

In the era of combustion engine vehicles, the ceiling of internal combustion engine power performance is very low. Buying a supercar to play with is nothing more than the power and handling of cutting-edge technology, and experiencing the passion of speed and driving pleasure.

In the new energy era, high-torque motors directly break through the ceiling of power performance. The pure electric car with more than 100,000 yuan on the street, the acceleration performance dares to break with Ferrari and Lamborghini. In this way, the technicality and playability of the superluxury sports car is greatly reduced.

In terms of luxury experience and enjoyment, domestic users' understanding of the concept of luxury has changed from the traditional luxury that emphasized the workmanship and configuration of materials in the past to the luxury of science and technology. Intelligent driving, intelligent chassis, voice interaction, and various large screens are more playable, topical, and social than the leather seats, luxury audio, and large spaces in the past, and have a more luxurious atmosphere of science and technology.

In addition to the traditional ultra-luxury brand, which can also bring users the blessing of identity or the value of collection, the advantages and attractiveness of traditional ultra-luxury brands in terms of product power have decreased significantly.

In recent years, China's high-end brands have continued to make upward efforts with the help of new energy, although they cannot be compared with traditional ultra-luxury brands in terms of brand heritage, but in terms of product power and topicality, they have surpassed ultra-luxury brands.

The most typical is the BYD Wangwang brand, whose price has exceeded one million yuan. The first model of Yangwang U8, priced at 1.098 million yuan, sold 1,593 units in December last year alone, and another 1,652 units in January this year, and the monthly sales volume has exceeded the sales of some ultra-luxury brands in China in a year. As a million-level domestic luxury car, looking up to the U8's achievements can be said to be phenomenal.

This phenomenon is not limited to the automotive market. In the wedding market of first- and second-tier cities in China, Bentley, Maybach and Rolls-Royce have been the first choice for wedding cars for many years in the past, and now they are also looking up to U8 to steal the limelight. It has been reported that the single-day rent of the U8 wedding car exceeds 10,000 yuan, which is even more expensive than the rent of a Cullinan and Bentley Bentayga.

Although the price of looking up to the U8 has just broken one million, it is less than the millions of ultra-luxury brands. But as mentioned earlier, the mentality of buying an ultra-luxury brand is not actually about the price, but about the playability and topicality. These two points, looking up are really a few streets away from the super luxury brand.

Lotus, a traditional niche supercar brand with the same name as Ferrari, has fully transformed to electrification after being acquired by Geely. In 2023, Lotus will sell more than 3,000 units in the Chinese market, far surpassing Ferrari in terms of sales. And Emya, which costs one million, has more than 300 orders within 3 hours of opening pre-sales.

This also shows that only electrification can fully stimulate the purchase interest of the wealthy. The traditional ultra-luxury brands that stick to fuel and lag behind in transformation will inevitably fall behind in this era.

At the end of the day, the rich also like the new and hate the old. It's not that the rich are getting fewer or running out of money, it's that the rich are collectively abandoning traditional ultra-luxury brands.

(Text/Youshi Auto Old Cannon)

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