I don't know if anyone else has posted this already (mods - please delete if they have), but Harry Metclafe's excellent column in Evo magazine is this month about the sales of sports cars at the moment. The figure that lept out at me from the page is this: In the first four months of 2013, Land Rover sold 19,157 Range Rover Evoques. I had to look that up, but basically it's a luxury SUV type thing. However, the shocking statistic is that that's more than the total sales of: Aston Martin, Bentley, Bugatti, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Lotus and Maserati; plus all variants of Audi R8, BMW Z4, Jaguar F type, Jaguar XK, Mazda MX5, Merc SLS, Nissan GT-R, Nissan 370Z, Porsche 911, Porsche Cayman, Porsche Boxster, Subaru Impreza, Subaru BRZ and Toyota GT86.. combined! Basically, the message is that sports cars aren't selling and SUVs are. Take Lotus as an example: according to Harry in 2013 so far they've sold 17 Elises and 11 Evoras in Europe; that's probably about one or two per dealership I'd guess? The Evora is the best everyday useable car I've ever driven in my entire life and that's how many get sold in four months of 2013 - 11...
Is it just me or does anyone else find this extremely surprising and rather shocking? Given similar road tax, mpg etc (Harry chose a Range Rover for his comparison after all, not a Prius), sports cars are surely way more desirable than SUVs? Who dreams of owning an SUV? Why not just buy a hatchback and save a wedge of cash? Sports cars are what kids put on their walls and play with on scaletrix, die-cast models, playstations and X-Boxes - aren't they? When those kids grow up, they want to own a car like that; at least that's the case with me and also most of my friends. Is that not how things work anymore?
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