Luxury Car Market Loses As High End Truck Demand Surges

You can get heated seats front and back as well as a heated steering wheel on a Hyundai compact car. These features are no longer luxury items. IMHO they should be standard on every car sold in Canada.

I'm still waiting on the supposed loses in the car market. Who writes this stuff? Auto manufacturers are selling more CUV/SUVs versus Cars. This is news?

I have a question for ALL to consider - Look back at the snipet above - and what does that say about the "Luxury" car market - as most
car" markets are moving towards Truck like vehicles.

For the most part - cars today are smaller on the Outside (And look it too) and for those who buy Luxury Trucks - it means that Exotic Performance or incredible Luxury interiors are not what they people want - they want a Vehicle with Presence - READ THAT SIZE. Even Mercedes never expected to sell as Many Maybachs as the have - but it is clearly BIGGER.

Ford should do a Lincoln pickup that shares the F150's frame but nothing of its body. It should also be styled like a Mercedes G Wagen or a Dodge Power Wagon i.e. very old-school, butch looking.

Why pay $75,000 on a luxury sedan when you can pay $75,000 for a useful overpriced pick up truck instead.

A lot of people make the choice of a pickup because they have horses, boats, offroad toys, Harley Davidsons (a surprising number of people trailer their Harleys to an event, ride and the event, and trailer them home), and so on. I'd rather have the luxury sedan. One of the reasons I liked the Continental was simply how luxurious it was and how pampered I felt. Our long-distance haulers are quite outfitted because why not be comfortable OTR?

In an ever increasing hostile culture buying a full size truck to many (non commercial truck users) elevates them above others with a feeling of control and indestructability. Pickups have been gentrified from Greenwich to Rodeo Drive.

People are looking at the vehicle's utility now when you buy luxury vehicles. You cannot haul stuff from home improvement stores or from Costco using a sedan.

The idea of a "luxury" truck or pickup is bizarre to me.

It's one thing if you need one of those vehicles, and you might as well make it as nice of an experience as you can.

It's another thing to buy one with the intention of using/enjoying it as a luxury vehicle.

For those people, the manufactures are counting on the fact that the buyers don't know or care about what luxury really is, despite the fact they can afford the price tag.

A truck or pickup's fundamental construction is the opposite of a luxury vehicle. You can put all the leather and shiny bits you want on it, and maybe that will trick some people who don't know any better. But it's not designed to be quiet, it's not designed to be smooth, it's not designed to have a cushy isolating ride, it's not designed to have solid vibration-free construction. It's designed to haul and work, and if you're a middle-class or working-class person who's never driven an S-Class, maybe you're fooled by fake wood and leather on the armrests.

So a Mercedes G Wagen is not a luxury vehicle to you?

Of course not. It's the absolute extreme of this bizarre phenomenon.

It's a military vehicle designed to go off-road and in to combat zones. In what way do the inherent attributes built in to that vehicle overlap with the desired qualities of a luxury vehicle?

And....you missed the point entirely.

What exactly is the point of a minivan also these days?