The Importance of Innovation for Luxury Car Manufacturers

Companies that make luxury cars are in a constant race against each other. As with all manufacturers, they want to build quality cars that offer their customers exactly what they want. What their customers want, however, can be very different from the norm.

Whereas manufacturers such as Ford and Volkswagen concentrate on fuel efficiency, keeping down their cars' price tags, durability and providing a range of models that will offer everybody a practical choice, luxury car manufacturers have a different set of standards that they are measured by.

Fuel efficiency is much less important, although in 2010 a number of manufacturers stated that fuel efficiency was becoming a concern for them, though this was mostly due to new environmental laws being passed in countries around the world rather than customer demand. Cost is also much less of a factor to those looking at the luxury car market, and although durability is an expectation, many buyers will have sold the car on within two years according to researchers.

For this reason, it's important that the car manufacturers are constantly innovating and keeping the models they produce on the bleeding edge of luxury design. If they fall behind a competitor, they can lose a whole ream of customers, and as luxury cars sell in fewer numbers that can be a real problem.

The researchers also showed that people buying luxury cars will often buy both versions of a model, the coupe model and convertible model, for instance, just so that they have the choice available to them at all times. For this reason it's important that every variation of the model has not only the same standard of quality, but also performs in a very similar way and preserves the driving experience of the other variations. It also highlights the fact that cost really isn't an issue to the typical buyer of a luxury car and that choice is an important factor for them, both in the models available to them and the individual changes that they can select for a car.

With the constant research and development that must be required to keep up with all of these factors, it's no wonder that when a new luxury car rolls off the production line there's a hefty price tag attached.