Torsten Müller-Otvös.Photo: Jeff Spicer/Getty
Rolls-Royce sales are booming in large part due to thedevastation of the COVID-19 pandemic, said the CEO of the ultra-luxury car brand.
“Quite a lot of people witnessed people in their community dying from COVID, that makes them think life can be short, and you’d better live now than postpone it to a later date,” said Torsten Müller-Otvös, according to theFinancial Times.
“That also has helped [Rolls-Royce sales] quite massively,” he added, per the outlet.
As of Tuesday, at least 5,495,238 people worldwide have died of COVID, according to theNew York Times. More than 839,308 of them were in the U.S.
The cost of a 2021 Rolls-Royce Ghost starts at $314,000, while its most expensive model, the 2022 Phantom, starts at $460,000, according toCar and Driver. The newest Rolls-Royce that Americans are most likely to see on the streets, an SUV named Cullinan, starts at $336,000. Both the Cullinan and the new Ghost were credited with driving the 2021 sales jump, theFinancial Timesreported.
Those price tags put the iconic British brand’s vehicles well out of reach for the typical American car consumer, which, on average, spent about $46,000 on each new vehicle in October,Kelley Blue Booksaid.
Rolls Royce.Martyn Lucy/Getty
So who exactly is buying vehicles thatcost as much as homes? Rolls-Royce said its average customer is now 43 years old, theFinancial Timesreported.
While China and the Americas each made up 30 percent of sales in 2021, Europe accounted for 20 percent and the Middle East had 10 percent.
“All markets were booming worldwide,” Müller-Otvös told theFinancial Times. “That is something I’ve never seen before.”
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“We have fought hard to get the chips we needed for all cars,” he told the newspaper.
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source: people.com
