The 1 Percent Are Buying a Ton of Supercars and Luxury Cars

You might be upset to hear the middle class is shrinking and the one percent are getting richer, but exotic carmakers certainly aren’t complaining.

A recent report from Bloomberg compared the growth of high-end carmakers that sell their vehicles for $200,000 or more to mainstream automakers. Global auto sales have grown by 23 percent in the past five years, while sales of Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren, Rolls-Royce and Bentley vehicles have grown by 51 percent over the same time period. The publication says the world just has more rich people now than it did five years ago – largely due in part to a strong stock market.

McLaren is playing a large role in the growth of high-end car sales. The British manufacturer has come from being a Formula 1 team that built a car once in the 1990s to a full-blown, mainstream supercar maker. It sold around 400 cars in 2011, but grew that number to 3,286 by the end of 2016. Lamborghini is hoping to double its sales from just under 3,500 a year to 7,000 with the arrival of the Urus SUV, and Ferrari is looking at introducing a “utility vehicle” of sorts to help attract new customers to the brand. Bentley also entered the SUV arena last year with the Bentayga and Rolls-Royce will soon hit back at its rival with the debut of the Cullinan SUV.r

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Today, there are over 225,000 “ultra high net worth individuals” in the world, or people with assets of $30 million or more. According to Bloomberg data, that’s a figure that was grown by 21 percent since 2012. The combined net worth of the world’s 100 richest people has also increased 39 percent to $2.6 trillion since that time. As long as this trend keeps up, it seems the world’s most opulent car brands won’t be experiencing a sales slow-down anytime soon. We’re just hoping they prefer sports cars to SUVs – lest we be inundated with McLaren, Ferrari and Lamborghini-badged off-roaders.

[Source: Bloomberg]