BLOOMBERG NEWS
U.S. sales of luxury auto brands including Toyota Motor Corp.’s Lexus and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz decreased last month, adding to evidence that the economic slowdown is causing even wealthy buyers to curb spending.
Sales by automakers’ luxury divisions — broadly defined by analysts as those selling autos for $40,000 aimed at the most-affluent consumers — dropped 13 percent from a year earlier, according to Woodcliff Lake, N.J.-based Autodata Corp. That outpaced the 8.9 percent decline in sales of all vehicles.
The results reflect the run-up in gas prices, dropping real estate values and tighter credit that forecasters said may halt economic growth by midyear. Sagging stock markets and shrinking bonuses may also be weighing on premium-brand buyers, spurring them to join lower-income shoppers in paring purchases.
“Normally, the case is the upper end is unaffected” by the economy, Jeff Schuster, an automotive sales analyst with J.D. Power & Associates in Troy, Mich., said in an interview. “You have this financial markets crisis that appears to have impacted the segment to a greater extent.”
Luxury-auto sales have fallen 16 percent this year, according to Autodata. The automakers reported U.S. sales yesterday.
Sales of Toyota’s Lexus, the largest U.S. premium brand, fell 10 percent in April and are down 9.6 percent this year. Mercedes-Benz’s fell 3 percent last month and Porsche SE’s were down 4.6 percent, General Motors Corp.’s Cadillac dropped 15 percent and its Saab unit was down 33 percent. Volkswagen AG’s Audi sales fell 4.6 percent.
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG bucked last month’s slide, posting a 5.6 percent April gain on the introduction of three new models. Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen also are sticking with their forecasts for higher 2008 sales of their premier brands.
Still, meeting those targets would require a tail wind from the economy that hasn’t materialized. Even with BMW’s April gain, the Munich-based automaker’s U.S. sales are down 8.2 percent this year.
The U.S. has lost an average of 65,000 jobs a month this year, and the economy’s 0.6 percent expansion rate over the six months through March was the weakest performance since the U.S. was last in a recession in 2001.
Growth may stall this quarter amid a slowdown in consumer spending, according to the median estimate of 62 economists surveyed from April 2 to April 8 by Bloomberg News. A majority said the U.S. is, or will soon be, in a recession.
Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy, rose at a 1 percent annual pace in the first three months of 2008, the smallest gain since the second quarter of 2001 and less than half the increase in the previous quarter.
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