BMW Says Sports Car Market Is Past The Prime - Do You Agree?

It's not the recession. It's aging Baby Boomers. At least in the US, where about 1/3 of the population is comprised of Baby Boomers, those born between 1947 and 1964. When this huge cohort was younger, they came of age to desire sports cars and bought them in record numbers. That's when we saw sports car popularity peaking. Boomers also tend to be status conscious, and consumerist minded.

Today, as the youngest of the Boomers is 50 and the oldest around 67, their desire for spirited driving has diminished, and their interests have shifted elsewhere.

To compound the problem, Gen-Xers and the Baby Boom Echo, the generations that follow the Baby Boomers, tend to have a different set of values, and expensive sports cars aren't one of them.

I think BMW could be right. But this doesn't mean that sports cars have no market or they'll go away. It just means they won't sell in the larger numbers we're used to seeing.

The focus of automobile have changed due to economic challenges as well as availability of modern rapid transit systems.
With cars gradually becoming autonomous the trend will like move even further away. Cars will likely become even bigger, more luxury oriented and technologically connected.

It's true that Corvette sales are much higher than the competition in the US, but I'm not sure about on a world wide basis. Corvette is selling every car they can produce for now but that will quickly slow as that saturate the pent up demand from 5 very slow sales years. Here is the long term trend, and as you can see it's downward:

Year---Sales
2002---32,555
2003---27,974
2004---35,276
2005---32,489
2006---36,518
2007---33,685
2008---26,971
2009---13,934
2010---12,624
2011---13,164
2012---14,132
2013---17,291
2014 thru August---23,483

Corvettes sold like 120 units last year in Europe. That should tell you something

If BMW did a fastback 2 Series coupe in the $35-50K range of the Mustang/Camaro/Challenger and marketed it as a German muscle car, i.e. an untraditional BMW, they would have a hot seller that would bring a LOT of people into the brand.

The "entry level" German sports cars are simply overpriced for what you get.

Then I guess BMW should end the JV with Toyota for development of a new sports car platform.

Actually - I would think that the problem is not that the market is past prime - but that the Worldwide Economy - especially europe - is still pretty bad - with little or no increase in all but the highest class wages and entry level wages for several years - which has left the younger wage earner with less money to afford the car.

When you add in that there are more options than ever - but the entry level options have decreased markedly - and you get fewer sales.

When the world economies rebound - and wages inevitably rise around the world - you will see more lower priced choices.