‘Premium’ car sales seem to be collapsing, or so the August UK sales figures suggest. Aston Martin down 26 percent year-to-date, Bentley down 17 percent, Lexus down 23 percent, Porsche down 26 percent.
Buyers, it seems, are turning away from glitz, glamour and guzzling and turning to more sensible values (like cost of running) instead. Will this, I wonder, persuade all those mass makers obsessed with being ‘more premium’ to halt their foolish quests?
Almost every car maker is at it. They have seen how much money BMW and Porsche are making from their poshness and they want a slice of it. As Oscar Wilde said, ‘we are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars’.
Premium: why everyone’s at it
Even the nice people from Kia, currently bottom of the bargain-basement, say they want to move ‘upmarket’. So do Citroën and Saab, Honda and Hyundai, Skoda and Seat; so do Renault and Ford.
They’re nearly all at, nearly all mouthing the ‘p’ word as they attempt to elevate their brands and raise their prices accordingly.
Premium is currently the most clichéd word in the jargon jumble that is the automotive lexicon. Premium is mostly just posh tosh; a euphemism for more pricey.
Besides, you can’t wish premium on yourself. True premium must be earned: it took BMW at least 30 years to transform itself, and Audi only a few years less. You can no more ‘turn on’ premium than David Beckham can suddenly sound like Lord Olivier.
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