“The sports-car market is roughly half of what it used to be. Post-2008, it just collapsed. I’m not so sure it’ll ever fully recover,” BMW’s Ian Robertson said in an interview with Bloomberg.
Before the financial crisis, global sales of the BMW Z4 and its immediate competitors (the Audi TT and Mercedes-Benz SLK) peaked at roughly 114,000. Projections for 2014, according to IHS Automotive, put the total around 72,000 worldwide–just over half the amount sold in 2007.
Slow recovery in North America and Europe is likely to blame for a large portion of that decline, but Robertson believes China and other emerging markets are also influencing the global demand for drop-tops. Inhospitable, polluted environments are not the ideal habitats for convertibles, so the opportunities for growth in many of those markets are limited. BMW also cites a preference for chauffeur-driven limousines in those cultures as a point in favor of larger vehicles.
Another likely contributor to the shift in buying habits is automakers’ expansion of SUV and car-based crossover lineups into price segments where they compete directly with their smaller offerings, and this expansion has not been matched in the sports car segment.
Today’s small, car-like CUVs offer respectable dynamics along with practicality and luxury in a combination that did not exist even ten years ago. With more choices before them, buyers may not be as inclined to compromise on practicality as they once were.
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