Tag Archives: Audi

Why Audi’s fall to 3rd place premium brand is a good thing – it’s simple

Brands, Cars, Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

audi-logoAudi, the recent king of volume growth among premium brands, is about to be overtaken by Mercedes and slip to third in global premium-car sales.

It will be a big change from just a few years back. Mercedes was overtaken as number one by BMW in 2005, and was replaced as number two by Audi in 2011.

And last year, in Europe, ended with Audi as Europe’s number one premium brand. But Mercedes, with a dramatic product offensive, industry-leading quality, a turnaround in China, punchy marketing, domination of Formula 1, steadily growing profits and record sales, is on its way back to number one here too, quite possibly by the end of the year.

So this is a significant moment.

Paradoxically, it may be Audi’s very drive for volumes that’s seeing it slip behind Mercedes and BMW. Last year it was the 6th-highest selling brand in Europe overall, and fifth in the UK, where its volumes approach twice that of Toyota. It’s done this by storming into new segments, fuelling new niches, and aggressively invading mainstream territory.

It has trumpeted the number of models and derivatives it offers, talking of an extraordinary 60-plus model lines. So there’ something for absolutely everyone, and ultra-low interest rates have meant that anyone can get into an Audi, including people who may have only ever had cars from mainstream brands. If you can lease one for the same as a Nissan, Toyota, Renault or Ford, why wouldn’t you?

So how can all this lead to a slowing of sales growth? It has unavoidably become commoditised, but more importantly it has become complicated.

With such a vast product range, what’s needed is simplicity. Audi has a wonderfully simple and recognisable graphic identity, and product design which shows a confident simplicity. Design and engineering teams across all car manufacturers are engaged in delivering a sea change in how we interact with our cars, through the integration of connectivity and the emergence of autonomous driving systems. The human-machine interface is having to be transformed in order to deliver such complex technology seamlessly and intuitively.

But the same drive towards a necessary simplification of these for the user has not been applied to distribution and retail operations, and how the car manufacturers present their products.

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SUV? Low-riding SUV? Crossover? Coupe? Sportback?

Is there anything less intuitive than navigating vast product ranges of SUVs, crossovers, off-roaders, soft roaders, sportbacks, liftbacks, hatchbacks, high-riding hatchbacks, low-riding SUVs, SUV coupes, people carriers, sports tourers, sportswagons and estates? This doesn’t help the consumer. And in this respect the premium brands are failing delivering an appropriate brand experience at a critical point in the customer journey.

In brand consultancy Siegel+Gale’s last Global Brand Simplicity Index, Audi, Mercedes and BMW were all categorised as ‘low score/high premium’, meaning that “They need to simplify their brand experiences, and they’ll be able to reap significant rewards if they do”, according to the report. Tellingly, only Ford – a mainstream brand which has simplified its product portfolio – was in the ‘high score/low premium’ category, for brands already seen as simple and needing instead to focus more on showing the value of the simplicity they offer. Ford was also the only car brand to make it into the world’s top 40 brands across all sectors, in an impressive 17th place.

It’s clear: by expanding their product ranges so fast and so far, the German premium brands have made a rod for their own backs. Mercedes, in 44th spot, is doing better than BMW and Audi, in 65th and 66th places. But it’s humble Ford which leads the way, and ironic that Audi’s mainstream VW parent brand beats it in all the key markets.

It’s a picture reflected in how these brands fare in the UK. Ford is streets ahead at number 19 in the list, with Mercedes at 59, BMW at 81 and Audi at 89. And in the USA, not one of the German brands makes it into the listing of 125 brands, while Ford is at 24.

Look more closely and you see that, in the UK, Audi is the only car brand classified as ‘low score/high premium’, emphasising the gap between where it is an where it could be. But you’ll also see that BMW dropped 15 places in the latest GBSI. That followed another nosedive of 23 places the previous year in the global rankings, and a remarkable fall of 35 places in the listings for Germany, where the native car brands normally perform far better than they do elsewhere.

bild-vergleich-bmw-4er-gc-gran-coupe-f36-3er-gt-f34-02
Two different models from two completely separate model lines – apparently

So BMW, right now still the highest-selling premium car brand around the world, tumbling down the order. An anomaly, surely? I don’t think so. Audi has been the most aggressive of the three German premium car brands, but BMW was first to attack the mainstream when it pushed the 3-Series hard into fleets in the last decade, effectively making it an upmarket Ford Mondeo. Mercedes followed, with extremely aggressive lease pricing, and paid for it; Audi has merely taken it to the next level with its model proliferation, while BMW has tried to do the same, but has introduced a number of unloved, neither-fish-nor-foul models for tenuous niches. It has lost brand focus and the GBSI reflects that.

And this is the real significance of the current shift among the German premium brands: Audi and BMW may come to be glad of their soon-to-be status as numbers two and three in the premium sales charts. They could focus more on other ways of achieving success, like customer retention, car-sharing and on-demand mobility, to better fit consumer needs in a world where Apple, Netflix and Uber have set new paradigms for consumption.

Volume for volume’s sake is the enemy of the premium brand. Simplicity, clarity, vision and a better brand experience are its friend. Achieve that and the volumes will follow.

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Cars drive Brand UK around in a vicious circle

Brands, Cars, Economics, Finance, Politics, UK, , , , , ,

Clydebank-Used-Car-Sales-Finance-GlasgowIt’s often said that car sales are a barometer of the economic climate. But, in the UK at least, they’re not – the booming market of the last five years has been way sunnier than our overcast economic conditions.

However, with a turnover of more than £70bn the retail motor industry is unarguably an indicator of national sentiment – even of our character and values. It’s one of the core elements of UK plc. And in a post-referendum landscape where the nation is redefining itself that makes it important.

The car sales figures for the first half of year show the market at an all-time high. Registrations were a record for any six-month period, up 3.2% on the same period last year, the previous best. March was the biggest ever month since the introduction of the bi-annual plate change. Last year was the best ever. And even post-referendum the indications are that 2016 could still beat it.

If we’re doing these numbers we must be in a pretty good place as we prepare to head up the slip road and off the EU highway – right? Well, no.

The extraordinary, counter-economic motor retail success story is really about the way car companies make their money – and in particular the British attitude to credit.

In the first quarter of this year the growth rate of UK consumer credit stood at almost 10%, Borrow-Money-to-Investthe highest since the banking crisis. Car dealer finance is a big part of this, accounting for £28bn in 2015 – twice what it was just four years earlier. Four out of five new cars are bought using borrowing, and today the car companies are effectively banks which sell cars. Finance is a core profit centre, and the PCP loans which the majority of customers take out to gain usership – not ownership – a brilliant retention tool.

The ultra-low interest rates enjoyed by consumers since 2008 also mean that almost anybody has been able get behind the wheel of a nice new car. Forget the £30,000+ sticker price – £195+vat a month for a Mercedes C Class, anyone? How about a Nissan Micra for £85+vat a month? That’s what you’d spend in a five-minute shop at Waitrose on the way home from work.

With PCPs, customers are becoming used to the notion of cars as mobile phones – something you get on a pay-monthly contract and replace every couple of years or so. When you do that, the man in the dealership will strongly resist any efforts on the customer’s part to pay cash. Even if you take out finance for a 48-month term he’ll be on the phone after 24 months offering something better, with no cost of change.

Some analysts are forecasting that sales could fall by over 5% next year as the UK adjusts to its new economic realities. However, with the near-certainty of even lower interest rates in the coming months, the appetite for new cars in the UK is likely grow – probably most among those who can least afford it.

And if the referendum fallout creates a drop in demand in the second half of 2016 then expect incentives to kick in swiftly to clear stock which was ordered for a market in economic status quo, not shock. The car industry will distress-sell. And the vicious circle keeps turning.

So while we like to view the Eurozone as a basket case, it’s the UK which has raced headlong back to the very conditions which characterised the economy at the time of the 2008 crash, and will probably continue to do so.

Let’s compare ourselves with Germany. While UK car sales rose by 37% between 2011 and 2015, the German market grew by just 1%. The German economy is humming along nicely, but when it does, the Germans don’t reach for their credit cards.

companybannerThe difference between the UK and most European countries is that we’re a finance-driven economy and they’re not. What does that say about Brand UK, our character and values? That we’re a nation of borrowers. That we’re no longer creators but consumers (preferably of German cars – VW, Audi, Mercedes and BMW alone account for almost 30% of the market). That we support our financial services industry more than we do our domestic car industry. That we see our cars, like our homes, as a measure of our success, yet we usually own neither. We just own the debt.

If the UK is redefining itself, this should not be part of our DNA. The EU may not have a clearly defined brand, but the UK’s is in danger of being devalued. British business culture should contain an element of daring, even risk. But not a lack of self-awareness or foresight.

 

Geneva 2015: Audi R8 saves the (real) world

Electric vehicles, Motor shows, , , , , , ,

maxresdefault-2Most reports of the 2015 Geneva Motor Show, which opened its doors last week, have adopted the view that it’s primarily about the exotic supercars. It’s not.

Yes, there were new supercars from Ferrari, Aston Martin, McLaren, Lamborghini and other exotic brands. Even the mainstream crowd was at it, with the revival of the iconic Ford GT.

But the real trend among exotic performance cars was more subtle. Not only that but it tells us something about the future of EVs (electric vehicles). Honda geneva-2015-94showed its own reborn icon, the NSX, but has reinterpreted it supercar as a three-motor hybrid. It’s a contemporary performance engineering approach far more in line with the hybrid hypercar holy trinity of LaFerrari, McLaren P1 and Porsche 918. But where their price tags are $1m-plus, the NSX will be more like $150,000.

Yes, that’s still a lot of money, but it positions the NSX in a new, real-world exotic sports car environment – a place where price, performance and poor taste are images-24restrained and the cars better for it – alongside BMW’s i8 and the Audi R8 e-tron unveiled at Geneva. Audi has gone a step further than Honda and BMW and given the R8 e-tron a pure electric driveline – producing 456bhp and a range of 280 miles for not much more money than the Honda. And not an engine in sight.

This reflects a rapidly growing trend – EVs are going upmarket. As everyday small-to-medium size cars like the Nissan Leaf and Renault Zoe, EV sales remain minimal. Even BMW’s avant-garde, brilliantly engineered, brilliantly marketed and affordable i3 isn’t shifting. So the carmakers are putting EV tech into high-end models and positioning them as the top variants – as in the new Audi Q7 e-tron SUV shown in Geneva, with a hybrid drivetrain. BMW, Range Rover and Volvo have all chosen this strategy already.

photo_20_0Audi has admitted that the pure electric technology in the R8 e-tron will be introduced in at least one more mainstream model in a couple of years or so – most likely a medium-sized SUV with a target of a 300m-plus range. No coincidence that Tesla, which has shaken the establishment with its battery-only performance and range, will have introduced its first SUV by then. This part of the market will be the epicentre of EV growth.

After publicly doubting battery-only EVs Audi has done a U-turn and is now clearly committed to them. It is effectively leading VW Group’s EV efforts, and may well become the leading EV OEM bar none, because it operates in the premium space where the additional cost of electric technologies can be absorbed, yet has mass-volume appeal. Audi could be a catalyst to widespread EV acceptance and adoption.

In this sense Geneva 2015 is all about the real world. Look past the roped-off stands, fake tans, carbon-fibre and colossal combustion engines and there’s an electric future coming into focus.

Large MPVs – the next big thing?

Brands, Cars, Design, Motor shows, , , , , , ,

Renault-Espace-0Large, stylish MPVs could be making a comeback. At the recent Paris motor show Renault relaunched the Espace as a bold, well designed MPV-cum-crossover, and Ford showed the latest S-Max, which will be a recipient of the company’s new Vignale luxury trim and concierge service.

The premium brands are making moves too: Paris saw the launch of the production BMW 2-Series Active Tourer, a compact MPV, while Mercedes – which replace the MPV-style A-Class with a conventional hatchback a couple of years ago – reaffirmed its interest in that segment by revealing a new B-Class.

That the two German premium brands are investing effort into MPVs is significant, but they may be missing an opportunity beyond the compact, higher-volume segments. Large MPVs are a neglected niche: after Toyota introduced the innovative and stylish Previa in the mid-1990s, the territory was commoditised by the mainstream brands, with utilitarian van-based models and products marketed as bland school-run devices offering space but no character and a mediocre driving experience. MPVs had become merely ‘people carriers’.

SUVs then entered the marketed. They were premium. They needed to be, because of the cost of the four-wheel-drive technology and – starting with the first BMW X5 – the additional cost of engineering decent handling into a heavy, high-centre-of-gravity lump. But more importantly the SUV concept was American, so they were marketed as lifestyle vehicles, recreational tools. They enhanced your life rather than announcing to the word your grim acceptance of its responsibilities.

Of the premium brands only Mercedes persevered with the large MPV, but its products have remained van-based. So Renault may have hit on something with the new Espace. Not everyone wants an SUV – Audi Q7s, BMW X5s and Mercedes MLs have begun to symbolise some of the less appealing characteristics of the monied middle-classes. And very few need off-road capability.

2015-volvo-xc90-steering-wheelI was with a Volvo strategy guy at Paris and it got me thinking. I’d probably buy an S-Max if it had a different badge. I’d almost certainly buy the Espace if they produce it in right-hand drive. But I’d far prefer it with a Volvo badge.

Volvo can carry off a contemporary interpretation of a large, MPV. It has the brand-width to do it (unlike Jaguar, another near-premium brand, which can stretching itself to SUVs but no further). An MPV would suit Volvo’s brand values and its design aesthetic. Volvo is about stylish functionality – vehicles with a purpose but also a personality, confident but classless, luxurious but life-2015-Volvo-XC90-interior-controls-press-imageenhancing. And its products are increasingly about cabin design – supremely comfortable but understated, ergonomically intelligent, with natural materials, authenticity and the influence of Scandinavian home interior trends. What better medium to express this than an inherently spacious, light and flexible MPV cabin?

Volvo’s boss recently said that until 2020 it will only replace existing models. That’s a pity, because there’s a gap in the market and a brand fit. And if Volvo were to fill that gap it would challenge the German big three by setting a trend rather than merely offering an alternative to a product type already offered by the competitors. Which would make the brand far stronger.

 

More Discovery, less Land Rover

Brands, Cars, Design, , , , , ,

The replacement for Land Rover’s compact, family-friendly model, the Freelander, was announced this week with a new name – the Discovery Sport.

lr_ds_statics_07Pulling the Freelander into the Discovery range is a sensible move for the Land Rover/Range Rover brands. It rationalises the model ranges, and it co-opts a name which has assumed sub-brand status thanks to the Discovery’s combination of modern but uniquely Land Rover looks and unbeatable functionality. The intention is clear from the oversized ‘Discovery’ bonnet badging where ‘Land Rover’ used to sit.

The new Discovery Sport has been engineered and packaged to provide more space than the outgoing Freelander, including a third row of seats, in a barely-bigger footptint. That’s clever. And it manages it while looking sleeker, more premium and completely contemporary.

But in doing so it leaves behind the Land Rover design language which has helped make the existing Discovery a brand icon and a statement of resolute differentiation from SUVs produced by other brands, which are mass-adopting a lower, less utilitarian look. The exterior styling also has a lot in common with Range Rover’s urban, fashion-oriented Evoque model, and plenty of similarities with the Evoques’ big brother.

It even shares that Range Rover’s Sport tag. This merges and confuses the two brands. But, more importantly, sportiness has little if any relevance to Land Rover. It’s diffuses the brand.

So what makes the Discovery Sport a Land Rover? And what will make the Discovery replacement a Land Rover? It’s no longer the styling – if anything, Range Rovers now have the more utilitarian body shapes. And it’s not the core value of functionality – after all, the Range Rover Sport also offers seven seats.

The increasingly high price point for Land Rovers doesn’t help. At launch – with only one engine, taken from the existing car – the Discovery Sport will cost from £32,000 to £43,000. A few options and the price will creep towards £50,000. That’s well into Porsche Macan territory – an SUV which is sporty because the brand dictates it.

Compare Land Rover’s price positioning with, say Audi’s. Equivalent versions of its Q5 SUV range top out at £37,500. OK, it’s not a Land Rover – but if the unique identity of the Land Rover brand is diluted then so is the emotional appeal of its products. Which is where Audi, BMW and Mercedes come in. They’ve aggressively targeted every market segment, especially SUVs. They’re premium but they’ve opened themselves up to everyone rather than adopt exclusive pricing. They’re a threat, the more so as Land Rover becomes more premium and less obviously functional.

Land Rover makes excellent cars. Sales will continue to grow in the short-to-medium term. But it has serious brand challenges. It should ensure that sales ambitions don’t shape the brand, and that Land Rover’s brand differentiation, achieved over decades of leadership, is both preciously preserved and clearly stated. That starts with the design of the product, but with the Discovery Sport it has become more generic. In the long term that’s going to help Audi, BMW and Mercedes more than Land Rover.

 

 

Volkswagen group not profiting from its brands’ equity

Brands, Cars, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

_origin_Fakti-kas-tevi-parsteigs-9Martin Winterkorn, boss of Volkswagen Group, admitted this month that the business “urgently” needs better profits, and today’s half-year results announcement confirmed falls in both profits and sales. This is the company, remember, which has targeted global number one status by 2018, and since Winterkorn became CEO in 2007 CEO has increased production by 4m units and doubled its revenues.

One of the reasons for VW’s poor profitability is that it isn’t global in terms of geographical spread. It’s in the key growth market, China, but is actually over-dependent on it, whereas it has little traction in south and south-east Asia. And market share is relatively low in the USA, with the VW brand on the slide. Another factor is that VW is light on compact SUVs, the biggest growth segment globally. A further reason and perhaps the most significant is its sheer size – a company this big simply can’t avoid inefficiencies.

But here’s the elephant in the boardroom: VW’s problem is also down to brands. VW group isn’t merely huge; it has a huge brand portfolio, with 12 brands in total – stretching to trucks and motorbikes – and over 310 models. Paradoxically, rather than providing economies of scale, in the accumulation of brands the collective mass has outweighed the ability to exploit the efficiencies.

By 2007 it already had the considerable challenge of consolidating and managing a passenger car portfolio of SEAT, Skoda, VW, Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley and Bugatti. Each was struggling for both individual relevance and group synergy. Skoda had already begun to produce cars in the VW brand’s space. VW in turn was encroaching on Audi, which was moving onto mainstream segments previously the preserve of these brands while simultaneously launching de-facto Lamborghinis. Bentley was doing a fine job. Bugatti was, well, Bugatti, and SEAT was struggling not to be a Spain-only brand and was being jumped by Skoda. The group was competing with itself, and the mainstream brands were sharing the same market space but without sharing the economic benefits. And meanwhile the world was plunging into an economic downturn.

So what did VW do? Since Martin Winterkorn’s 2007 accession it’s added four more brands: Porsche, Ducati, MAN and Scania. It has also become the largest stakeholder in Suzuki and even consumed the design house Italdesign Giugiaro. And Skoda has stated that it wants to sell on quality and style, while Lamborghini and Bentley have announced SUVs.

VW’s strategy goes directly against the new automotive industry paradigm. Toyota has continued to excel in financial performance. It has not acquired other makes but concentrated on its core brand, which has maintains clear values, and its own premium-luxury brand, Lexus. Hyundai, which led even Toyota on profitability in 2013, was forced into a merger of unequals with Kia when the South Korean business bubble burst in the late 1990s. They produce cars for the same market segments, yet with only two brands they’ve not only managed the situation by differentiating the brands but have grown stratospherically since 2007. Meanwhile Ford has divested itself of Aston Martin, Volvo, Jaguar and Land Rover, and is emerging strongly under the ‘One Ford’ mantra. GM is now doing the same in Europe, discarding Chevrolet to concentrate on Opel/Vauxhall. And VW’s German rival BMW has limited its acquisition trail to the very distinct Rolls-Royce and Mini brands and retained the BMW group values across its portfolio.

They’ve all benefitted from a focus on a single brand or a primary and secondary brands. It’s very hard for Volkswagen group to do the same. The VW range’s own brand is still strong in spite of becoming part of the uncomfortable brand portfolio dynamic. But the group’s brand is infinitely less than the sum of its parts. It’s impossible to say what it stands for in the way that you can about its volume peers Toyota and Ford.

That VW’s profits are suffering is not surprising. That’s what happens when a goal defined by volumes is set. If the goal were instead to define and differentiate the brands more clearly, with each given the objective of becoming the most desired among consumers, then the volumes would follow. They would do so more slowly but they would do it sustainably.

Jaguar – the power to change the world?

Brands, Cars, , , , , , , ,

jaguar-teaser-hed-2014_0Jaguar is going for it. And, you have to say, doing great things with how it’s communicating the brand. British, edgy, daring, contemporary, it’s making the most of the freedom it has compared with the premium-brand grandees Audi, BMW and Mercedes. It’s Paul Smith to Hugo Boss, Arts and Crafts to Bauhaus, Virgin to Lufthansa, The Who to the Scorpions. It’s punk premium.

The German carmakers can’t reinvent themselves like Jaguar’s doing. They’ve got solid-core brands and big market shares to protect, and are now mainstream players. They sell in every segment of the market, including to fleet managers and folk who would have been driving Fords and Peugeots until a few years ago, whereas no matter how successful Jaguar becomes it’s going to remain a relatively small-volume player. But unlike the other small premium brands, Lexus and Infiniti, it has heritage, so it can communicate like a niche brand, in a confident and exclusive way. It simply doesn’t need to appeal to everyone.

So it’s pushing the boundaries, and the high-profile Good to be Bad campaign works well, at least for the USA. The ad has been well cast with alternatives to the mainstream: Tom Hiddleston isn’t yet stereotyped, and Mark Strong, essentially a supporting actor, makes for a believable villain. Yes, since playing the terrifying Don Logan, in Sexy Beast, Ben Kingsley exudes barely contained psychosis – someone Ray Winstone wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. And yet he’s suitably ambiguous, a richly spiced mix of Gandhi, RSC and Iron Man. This is a sharp selection of bad boys for the new brand.

But the use of actors and celebrities, no matter how carefully chosen, is a well-worn route and a rather prescriptive brand tool. We don’t really think that the good-to-be-baddies drive Jaguars.

Jaguar is cooler than this. Earlier this month, somewhat more quietly, it launched the ‘100 Most Connected’ list with GQ, first F-Type customer Jose Mourinho and the very now Editorial Intelligence organisation, which connects the UK’s most influential people and curates relaxed meeting-of-minds get-togethers. The next one is at Aldeburgh, the Victorian Suffolk coastal town. True, it now serves as a seaside London suburb, but it’s very deliberately not Davos.

In engaging with this community Jaguar is aligning itself with state-of-the-art thinking: we’re now in a networked world, where who you know means what you know. Where top-down power is beginning to be unseated by a free flow of information. Where companies are beginning to value knowledge and thinking as much as revenues and profit. Where CSR is beginning to be questioned by a genuine desire to improve the quality of people’s lives. Where we need companies, brands and politicians to believe in what they’re doing.

So here we have Alain de Botton and David Beckham, Peter Fincham and Lionel Barber, Idris Elba and Andrew Neil holding hands in the Most Connected list, gazing out at the sea and feeling the sand between their toes. With Jaguar in amongst it. The message is that the company is progressive enough to embrace the new, post-recession world – one in which failure of the financial system, the need for sustainability and the growth of digital interaction have created a real shift in the way people think and communicate. Jaguar is absorbing influences from the varied spheres which a company providing something as vital as mobility should do.

In an essentially conservative, old-fashioned motor industry driven by the imperative to sell and month-end figures, Jaguar is probably the only brand which can do this. It has an extraordinary opportunity – to demonstrate an understanding that, in future, brands will be shaped not so much by traditional marketing messages as by changes in corporate thinking and behaviour. By actions rather than words. By engaging with people. By doing good.

Utopian vision? It’s happened before. As Henry Ford, the man who mass-mobilised the world, said: “To do more for the world than the world does for you – that is success.”

Note: Go to http://www.citizenrenaissance.com for more about progressive communications from the UK’s leading exponent Robert Philips, ex-Edelman EMEA President & CEO and founder of http://www.jerichochambers.com

Is Audi sacrificing brand equity for volumes?

Brands, Cars, Design, , , , ,

audi-nanuk3_1024-940x628The shape of the car market has changed completely in the last decade. It used to have a bulging middle, stuffed with the mainstream makes, and with premium and value brands occupying the poles.

Now it resembles an egg timer. The middle has been squeezed to within an inch of its life, by aspirational value brands from one direction and acquisitive premium brands from the other. Ford, Vauxhall/Opel, Peugeot, Renault, Honda and Toyota have had their market share ripped apart by Skoda, Kia and Hyundai, and BMW, Mercedes and Audi.

No brand comes close to Audi in shaping this new landscape. The company has embarked on an explosive product diversification programme, offering everything from a supermini to a supercar, with around 50 key model variants including crossover versions of all its volume products. It plans to increase to 60 variants by 2015, partly by entering some of the few segments it’s not already in, with Q6 and Q8 crossovers, a version of VW’s Up! mini and even a people-carrier. Audi’s value to VW was evident at the recent Frankfurt motor show, where it was given its own hall, separate from the one accommodating the group’s seven other brands, where its segment-busting mentality and naked ambition were shown by an off-road supercar concept.

It’s not only the largest of the premium makes by volumes; it outsells Fiat and Citroen, and is within 0.5% of Peugeot and Renault. And now it’s become the UK’s fourth-largest seller, behind just Ford, Vauxhall and VW. The fact that it’s achieved this without a single model in the top 10 emphasises its incredible spread. CEO Rupert Stadler’s recent comment that Western Europe’s market won’t recover before the end of the decade must have felt like a stab in the eye to the beleaguered mainstream brands.

An extraordinary success then. But the future may not be quite as simple: it will be a challenge to maintain brand equity as a result of shifting into so new market segments and growing so fast. Yes, Audi benefits from the scale of VW Group, meaning that it can develop high-quality products economically and price them competitively, so it will continue to churn out very good cars at affordable prices.

But the company has built its business on being premium and aspirational. Its ubiquity means it’s no longer truly aspirational and, by definition, it’s not exclusive: while the exceptionally low interest rates of the last few years have helped grow sales they’ve also helped commoditise the the productsA few years ago owning an Audi meant independent thinking and cool Bauhaus understatement; now it means nothing in particular.  If a brand is present in every part of the market including all the mainstream segments, conquesting business from the mainstream brands, can it continue to perceived as premium?

It will be interesting to find out, and only the customer will decide.

Jaguar to land on aluminium feet

Cars, , , , , , ,

22-2014-jaguar-f-type-fdThat Jaguar is set to build compact cars is not a surprise. It’s a necessity and a belated one at that.

The brand has to grow and to do that it has to diversify. Large, essentially traditional saloon cars and sports cars are not enough. It’s 10 years since Porsche started producing the Cayenne SUV, which now provides over half its sales. And in that time BMW, Mercedes and Audi have transformed their product ranges by introducing new models into parts of the market they’d never previously touched. Including downsizing into compact and mini vehicles as well as SUVs. This is where the growth is, and will continue to be as the Chinese market dynamics shift from luxury for the wealthy few to affordable premium for the new middle classes.

Add in the facts that the compact Range Rover Evoque – a daring departure for the brand – sold more than twice Jaguar’s total volume in 2012 on its own, and that the Jaguar brand accounted for less than 20% of Jaguar Land Rover sales in the first half of this year, and it’s clear the new strategy is not a choice for Jaguar. It’s an imperative.

But it’s one which needs extremely sensitive handling. Jaguar is not a German premium brand. It’s a British brand with heritage. And a royal warrant. When the prime minister climbs into his XJ it’s a statement of pride, not efficiency. Mercedes are driven by taxi drivers. Audi has diversified to the point where it is commoditised – you don’t need to look anywhere else, whatever kind of car you want.  BMW has even invented a few sub-niches of its own. Jaguar doesn’t do these things and doesn’t need to.

The mere fact that a 3-Series rival and an SUV will bear the Jaguar badge will be enough of a leap. Remember that Mercedes makes trucks. Audi has its roots in NSU, which made lawn-mower engines. And BMW used to make three-wheelers. Whereas Jaguar established itself making desirable cars, with sporting pretensions.

It has therefore recently been busily reinventing its image around sportiness, with core brand campaigns centred on athletics and cycling – where Britain currently excels. Compact mainstream models and especially SUVs don’t lend themselves to this. But Jaguar is cleverly taking the route of aluminium architecture for the new cars, meaning light weight for better handling and performance. This will help the brand fit of the new cars – and, just as important, add premium perception and differentiation.

The sales model for the new Jaguar SUV will obviously be its cousin, the Evoque, but the model for its positioning and image will surely be the Macan, Porsche’s new smaller SUV. Porsche has done Jaguar a huge favour by making an even bigger leap first.