High End Trucks More Profitable Than Luxury Cars - Should The German 3 Expand Into Pickups As Well?

With auto sales surging across the US and with the top luxury players posting record profits each month, you would expect German and Japanese players to be the top players. But the Detroit three have their assets in the segment, and we’re not talking about the continuously feeble Lincoln and Cadillac brands. It’s the high-end pickups and SUVs that actually take the lion’s shares of sales. The so-called “luxe truck” phenomenon has been on the rise, with poshed up pickups and SUVs actually making up the big chunk of US vehicle deliveries over $50,000, according to an analysis by online auto-buying service TrueCar.
Read Article

leej - 12/16/2014 1:41:28 PM

+1 Boost

It certainly would be easy for them...anyone with photo shop can design a BMW/Mercedes today...just look at the rendering with this article.

carsnyc - 12/16/2014 2:17:46 PM

+1 Boost

Agreed and that's the result of how already diluted the good brands are these days. I just hope BMW or Mercedes fall for it.

ricks0me - 12/16/2014 5:21:20 PM

0 Boost

Of course the Germans should build pick up trucks. I will drive my 2015 Ford F350 into a river just so I can get a German badge on a pick up truck. Just what I always wanted....LOL

MDarringer - 12/16/2014 8:11:46 PM

-1 Boost

A Mercedes GLS or BMW X5 could be turned into a crew cab, short-bed pickup for cheap, so as silly as it sounds, they should gamble.

The result would be a lifestyle pickup.

chewy - 12/17/2014 12:36:47 AM

0 Boost

Big rigs are 100k plus and Freightliner and others sell a bunch of them, doesn't make it a luxury vehicle. It's a pretty small market with the US only where this phenomena exists. Probably harder to break into the full size pickup market as an import (and HD in particular) than for a domestic to make it in the luxury game. Mercedes is heavily expanding its van lineup and those are pretty pricey. MB does have the decency to separate out the Sprinter sales when reporting numbers.

JDMUSMuscle - 12/17/2014 4:19:17 AM

-1 Boost

Dumb question. Pickup trucks only would sell well in the U.S., not in other countries. And why not just make some Hyundai Accent competitor when THAT is also profitable? Why not just keep making cheap, compact sedans that compete with Honda Civic? And 3 series, C class and such already sell as many as the pickup trucks in the U.S., so this question is pretty dumb.

The reason why the pickup trucks sell a lot in the U.S. is because the majority of the Americans are Average Joes with not much income, thus, they look for a cheap vehicle that can compensate "something", and thus, they end up choosing the cheap domestic pickup trucks that anyone can buy.

And Mercedes already has a pickup truck. It's called G63 AMG 6 x 6, which costs a half million dollars.

cidflekken - 12/17/2014 3:16:29 PM

0 Boost

Clearly you miss the point. This article and proposal is a result of the fact that a large number of pickup trucks sold are $50k+. That doesn't say that these are "Average Joes with not much income".

That being said, I don't think that buyers of these $50k+ pickups are your typical luxury-brand buyer for the most part. A pickup truck falls right into their normal taste of things despite truly having the ability to purchase from a luxury brand.