BMW said sports cars may never find as many buyers as they did in the market's glory days before the global recession.
"The sports-car market is roughly half of what it used to be," Mr
Ian Robertson, BMW's head of sales, said in an interview at the
manufacturer's headquarters in Munich.
"Post-2008, it just collapsed. I'm not so sure it'll ever fully recover."
In Europe and North America, the car's role as a status symbol has
diminished, with sport-utility vehicles and their smaller crossover
cousins becoming more popular.
In China and emerging markets, Mr Robertson said, hot weather,
pollution and a penchant for chauffeur-driven limousines have made
sports cars less popular among well-heeled clients.
Despite the downturn, selling a car built for speed and performance
- priced at a relatively high margin - is an important part of building
a brand's allure.
That is why BMW, known for turning out sporty luxury vehicles, is
teaming up with Toyota Motor Corp to share development costs on a new
mid-size sports car, he said.
The two car makers recently said their project has moved to the
concept stage after completing a feasibility study. They declined to
provide details.
Auto markets in Europe and North America, where cars such as Daimler
AG's Mercedes-Benz SLK and Audi's TT are popular in the sports segment,
are recovering slowly after the financial crisis sent demand to the
lowest in decades.
Annual growth in excess of 10 per cent in Asia has helped offset the declines.
Combined global sales of the TT, SLK and BMW's Z4 peaked at about
114,000 in 2007 before slumping 45 per cent by 2010, according to
research company IHS Automotive.
Demand in China has remained negligible, while global sales are
expected to reach about 72,000 vehicles by the end of the decade, IHS
said.
"The market has been diluted with more offerings designed to appeal
to the kind of demographic traditionally associated with these models,"
Mr Tim Urquhart, a London-based analyst at IHS, said in an e-mail.
"Young, urban, upwardly mobile professionals are now able to buy a
much wider range of lifestyle vehicles other than sports cars."
BMW is boosting sales of its other vehicles even as the sports
segment stagnates. Global deliveries for the brand gained 9.3 per cent
in the first 10 months of the year to 1.47 million cars, putting the
group as a whole, including its Mini and Rolls-Royce nameplates, on
track to sell more than two million vehicles this year, the company
said.
Car makers tend to look for partners to limit costs of developing new technology and small-scale vehicles.
Other tie-ups include Daimler's cooperation with the Renault
SA-Nissan Motor Co alliance, which has been gradually expanding beyond
projects such as new versions of Daimler's Smart city cars and
Renault's Twingo subcompact.
BMW, the world's biggest maker of luxury cars, and Toyota agreed
last year to collaborate on the underpinnings of a vehicle, the most
visible project within a broader partnership that also includes
cooperation on fuel cells and lightweight technology.
BMW is "taking very progressive steps with this now, and we'll see how it goes in the months ahead," Mr Robertson said.
