To get a gauge on the luxury vehicle market, CommSec tracks the sales of 17 luxury marques: Aston Martin, Audi, BMW, Bentley, Ferrari, Hummer, Jaguar, Lamborghini, Lexus, Lotus, McLaren, Maserati, Maybach, Mercedes-Benz, Morgan, Porsche and Rolls Royce.
Sales of luxury marques hit peak levels of 106,658 units in the year to December 2016. And in the period to June 2019, rolling annual luxury vehicle sales fell by 19.7 per cent, hitting 4-year lows.
But in July 2019, rolling annual sales lifted for the first time in two years. And the rolling annual measure has consistently risen in the four months since.
In November the annual total of luxury vehicle sales rose by 1.5 per cent to 87,445 vehicles. Sales are down 5.3 per cent on a year ago after being down 13.1 per cent in the year to June.
Annual sales of Lexus were at all-time highs in the year to November and sales of Rolls Royce were just shy of record highs.
Luxury vehicle sales have now risen for five straight months, matching similar gains in home prices. The hope is that the strength at the top end of new vehicle and housing markets will extend to broader strength for new vehicle sales, home sales and home prices.
But other signals remain weak and worrying. Nobody except a few rich fatsos trust relty any more:
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David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
