Maybe it comes down to simple logistics. If you can’t fly anywhere you please because a pandemic is slowing down flight options and shutting down airports, you might find more of a need for a luxury vehicle in order to travel in style. Or, maybe it’s that people are looking to travel more in a smaller radius; especially after the pandemic left us all feeling cabin fever in our lives which largely became home-bound. Whatever the reason is, the changes have brought some record-breaking sales for one major car company. Rolls-Royce has seen the biggest jump in sales it has ever recorded…even since its beginning nearly 120 years ago.
Early last week, luxury carmaker Rolls-Royce announced that sales for their luxury cars went up by 49% in 2021. This, the company notes, sets a record high.
Rolls-Royce CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös says that the company, which is a unit within Germany’s BMW company, sold 5,586 vehicles to customers in 2021.
“In the luxury sector as a whole, the struggle was not so much focused on attempting to find customers,” the Roll-Royce CEO notes. “but rather producing enough product to satisfy huge customer demand.”
These record sales were attributed to numbers in over 50 countries. This, Rolls-Royce says, is despite the largely volatile sales environment created during this time for many companies by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rolls-Royce Among Many Luxury Cars Seeing A Spike In Sales
One of the business sectors that have seemed to do well in these unprecedented times is premium and luxury car sales. These sales are rapidly growing in global markets. Reasons for this have been attributed to restrictions that have been put on travel options; leading to the wealthier consumers having more of a disposable income to spend on items such as these.
“Covid forced many people to ground,” notes Müller-Ötvös told in a conversation with Reuters. “Not to travel anymore.”
“For that reason there is quite a lot of wealth accumulated and that is spent on luxury goods,” Müller-Ötvös adds. “We profited from that development.”
The Rolls-Royce CEO also notes that the car company’s British plant is running close to its capacity, with orders backed up all the way into the third quarter of 2022.
“If you order a Rolls-Royce today, you will expect to take delivery of it about a year from now,” the CEO notes.
BMW sales reached a record high of 2.2 million within its brand in 2021. This, the company notes is despite a global shortage of a necessary component to the cars computer programs. These semiconductor chips are also key to the development of the Rolls-Royce vehicles.
However, notes Müller-Ötvös, this shortage will not be slowing production on the Rolls-Royce line.
The car company CEO notes that BMW has assured the company that they “could take delivery of all the chips we need to build our cars, so we haven’t seen any shortages.”