Rolls-Royce: Covid has spurred document gross sales of our vehicles

Covid-19 spurred rich motorists to purchase extra Rolls-Royces than ever earlier than as a result of it made them realise life is brief, the posh carmaker has stated.

As international instances escalated in 2021, Rolls-Royce Motor Vehicles, based mostly in Goodwood, West Sussex, booked the very best annual gross sales in its 117-year historical past, promoting 5,586 automobiles.

The corporate’s chief government, Torsten Müller-Ötvös, stated the pandemic had led to clients, whose common age was 43, responding to the reminder of their very own mortality by splashing out on luxury cars.

“Many individuals witnessed individuals of their group dying from Covid and that made them assume life could be brief and also you’d higher reside now slightly than postpone till a later date,” stated Müller-Ötvös.

“That has helped Rolls-Royce.”

He stated the carmaker, owned by BMW, had additionally benefited from the restrictions the pandemic had positioned on rich customers’ alternatives to spend their cash elsewhere.

“It is vitally a lot resulting from Covid that your complete luxurious enterprise is booming worldwide,” he stated. “Individuals couldn’t journey so much, they couldn’t make investments so much into luxurious companies … and there’s fairly some huge cash accrued that’s spent on luxurious items.”

He stated gross sales had risen in each a part of the world, an uncommon development, with Better China and the Americas remaining the 2 greatest markets, every at 30% of gross sales.

No different producer offered extra vehicles for greater than €250,000 (£208,000), he stated. The Phantom mannequin was the corporate’s greatest vendor however its Cullinan SUV accounted for 30% of 2021 gross sales.

Its first absolutely electrical automobile, the Spectre, is because of be delivered in 2023 forward of a transfer to cease producing combustion engines and go absolutely electrical by 2030.

With the pandemic displaying no signal of curbing the spending energy of the extraordinarily wealthy, Rolls-Royce additionally introduced a “coach-built” service that may enable devotees of the marque to design their very own automobile over 4 years.

This can enable them to buy “one thing cash usually can’t purchase however you will get it with us”, Müller-Ötvös stated.

He added that Brexit had brought on pointless difficulties for Rolls-Royce due to restrictions on employees motion and the executive burden of exporting, an issue for a carmaker that sends 90% of its British-made automobiles abroad.

“Brexit positively didn’t make our life in any method simpler,” he stated.

Any affect on the corporate’s prices is not going to present up till it studies full accounts later this yr.

In keeping with the newest accounts filed at Corporations Home in June, pretax revenue for 2020 was £61m, down from £97m in 2019.