While China’s appetite for SUVs has steadily risen and Lamborghini has set itself ambitious sales targets in the country, an analyst told Caixin that the market for luxury auto brands remains limited as, despite the expanding middle class, few people can afford to purchase such expensive vehicles. Photo: Visual China
Lamborghini will take its incoming Urus SUV to the Chinese market next year, in hope of capitalizing on the country?s growing love affair with the sport utility vehicle (SUV).
The new Urus SUV, which will be unveiled early next month in Italy, is a model that combines the ?best performance? of a sports car and the ?luxury? features of any high-end car, said Francesco Scardaoni, the company?s Greater China managing director.
The Italian sports car manufacturer initially aims to sell 3,000 Urus SUVs a year, with plans to raise the target to 6,000 in the coming years. The target is a large one considering that Lamborghini sold 3,457 vehicles globally across its entire product line in 2016. By focusing on SUVs, Lamborghini is following rivals such as Porsche and Bentley, which earlier launched their own SUV models.
Although Lamborghini launched its first SUV, called the LM002, in the 1980s, Porsche was first luxury carmaker to get into the SUV market in more recent times. The company was soon followed by Bentley and Aston Martin.
SUVs sales accounted for 76.6% of Porsche?s total revenue for the first three quarters of 2017, according to the company.
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