CarBuyersNoteBook

I suppose it might come as a surprise, if you haven’t read a newspaper or watched any TV in the last six months or so, that the luxury car market is collapsing.  But what’ll really surprise you is the depth to which it’s falling.  For instance, the total sales for luxury car sales this year has fallen fully one third from this time last year.

A third of the market, just gone.  That’s bad enough for anybody, but he luxury car makers aren’t taking this lying down, no sir or ma’am as the case may be.

A recent BMW marketing push, for example, pointed out that its diesel sedans were the most fuel-efficient in their class.  And Bentley offered up incredible financing rates on its catastrophically priced car that was almost the same deal as a GM pickup’s rate.

I’m not really surprised that luxury car makers are finding things tough in the new economy–when pundits bust out lines like “frugal is the new black”, you really have to wonder about the whole mess.  But this may be a sign of much more systemic weakness in the overall economy, and that’s something we’ll all have to watch for.