Why every luxury automaker wants to make a million-dollar car
...Over the past decade we've seen almost every automaker (that calls itself a true "luxury" brand, at least) produce a contraption with a seven-digit price tag. Sometimes they get there only by making a one-off with diamond-rimmed headlights and titanium bones, but they get there.
The brands make these cars because people buy them. The past few years have seen an explosion of royals and tycoons around the globe who buy entire fleets of Aston Martins and Lamborghinis to support their proclivities.
Bloomberg has discovered more than three dozen new billionaires in the world since January alone, and more than 300 since 2012.
They buy the cars in Los Angeles, Doha, Moscow, Sao Paulo and Shanghai.
Some, like hotel tycoon Steve Wynn, buy them to bolster their business interests just as much as their personal life. For them, it's not that big a deal.
"The fact of the matter is there are a lot of rich people around the world, and I mean super rich -- hundreds of millions of dollars to billions of dollars of net worth," says Jack Nerad, executive market analyst for Kelley Blue Book. "When you're talking about these types of people, a million-dollar car isn't really much of a stretch at all."
It's also lucrative for the carmakers, despite the extra work required to specialize a given automobile. Margins on a standard Ferrari or Lamborghini hover around 15 percent, and when the price tag on a particular car reaches into the seven figures, that amount can increase significantly...
