Lamborghini: Run on the luxury cars

Despite inflation and the energy crisis: the business with luxury products is booming. An example: the sports cars from the Italian brand Lamborghini. The VW subsidiary is taking its time with a fully electric model.

There is no free space in the parking lot at the Lamborghini company premises. The Italian sports car brand has become a crowd puller with its museum, without registration nothing works. After the corona pandemic, says Elena Golinelli from the communications department, there was an enormous increase in tourism from all over the world.

Two-thirds more profit

The high number of visitors at the modern company headquarters in Sant’Agata Bolognese between Bologna and Modena reflect the car manufacturer’s enormous growth course: In the first nine months of this year, Lamborghini increased its sales by 30 percent compared to the previous year, to 1.93 billion euros. The operating profit was even almost 70 percent, to 570 million euros.

Lamborghini boss Stephan Winkelmann is satisfied – in conversation with the ARD he refers to various factors that interact: Firstly, the strength of the brand. On the other hand, the cars are so popular precisely because they are still pure combustion engines. In the next few years, all models will be converted to hybrid. “It’s important that we don’t sell mobility, but dreams,” says Winkelmann. “And that’s why the promise is also very clear to our customers: fewer emissions, but more performance in relation to today’s model range.”

Prices from 200,000 euros

Most of the buyers of the fast speedsters with the fighting bull as the company crest live in the USA, China, Germany, Great Britain and Japan; on average they are 45 years old. The prices of the Lamborghini models start at around 200,000 euros – special editions can cost well over a million.

The new generation of buyers, says Winkelmann, can only be convinced “if you deliver both, i.e. more environmental compatibility and of course continue to, let’s say, keep this dream alive. For us, the big challenge is to make it credible that this change can be made without sacrificing emotions”.

Initially hybrid models planned

The business with exclusive super sports cars is extremely capital-intensive, according to Winkelmann. There are constant innovations in technology. The biggest challenge is now the way to the electric drive. Over the next two years, the models will initially be gradually converted to hybrid technology, with the aim of reducing CO2 emissions by at least half from 2025.

At the end of the decade, the Italian brand, which belongs to the Volkswagen Group, wants to put the first all-electric Lamborghini on the road – otherwise it would have no future. The engineers have to tinker with how the super sports car remains light-footed and still delivers the dreamed-of performance.

The sound is crucial for many

And then there’s the “sound” – a “must have” for some hobby racers. Lamborghini boss Winkelmann, who was born in Berlin and grew up in Rome, knows how important it is: “There are two options. Either you simply have what an electric motor brings with it – much quieter driving behavior. Or you generates a new sound that is then typical of the brand. We haven’t made a decision on that yet, but we’re working on it.”

The driving simulator is also constantly manned in the museum at the Sant’Agata Bolognese location, where legendary models such as the Miura or Countach by company founder Ferruccio Lamborghini are on display; the visitors want to experience the typical sound of driving a super sports car in an emotional way.

“We stand for gradual growth”

90 percent of Lamborghini customers are male, but the company is increasingly turning to women. According to Winkelmann, the SUV in particular, i.e. the Urus model, is popular with women. The Urus has set a sales record in the first nine months of 2022, reaching 4,834 models, up seven percent compared to the same period last year and the highest number since its debut in 2018.

An Urus or a Huracán also has to be fast. But the Lamborghini boss emphasizes that lateral acceleration is much more important. “That means how fast you come into a corner, how the car brakes, how it reacts to the pedals, to the steering. That’s practically this feeling like a racing driver. And that’s this emotion that’s not necessarily comparable to the bare technical data.”

Winkelmann already managed Lamborghini from 2005 to 2016, since December 2020 he has been Chief Executive Officer (CEO) again. You always worked very carefully, he says in an interview with the ARD: “We have never tried to fully exploit the market, but we stand for gradual growth”. Anyone signing a purchase contract for a Lamborghini today has to wait at least 18 months. A luxury brand is also related to creating scarcity.