How healthy is the luxury car market?

How much does a typical supercar buyer earn? How old are they and where do they live? Which makes and models do they prefer – and how interested are they in EVs?

A new report into the luxury car sector in the UK tells us all of this and more, revealing how demand for high-value cars has changed in recent times, and how the average age of a supercar customer is slowly edging down.

Our car finance partner JBR Capital published its first Luxury Car Report last month. It will continue to publish them quarterly, allowing us to observe changing trends in the market over time. The data is all JBR Capital’s own – over 6000 finance agreements were analysed to compile the report, giving a really solid sample size. Most of those were for used cars (89 per cent, the remaining 11 per cent being brand new) meaning the report largely concerns pre-owned cars.

It uses the word ‘luxury’ in the broadest sense – high-end SUVs, sports cars, supercars and premium EVs all figure in the data. So what does the report reveal? Between early 2021 and May this year, the average sale price of a luxury car was £105,000. The average age of buyers in this segment was 42 and 93 per cent were male. The average salary was £154,000 and 38 per cent lived in London or the South East.

The most financed marque was Porsche, predictably enough, the 911 the most financed single model. Almost 12 per cent of cars financed by JBR Capital were 911s, their average sale price £112,000. Electric cars and SUVs had been growing in popularity year on year, but demand for both has levelled off or even fallen away in 2023 – it will be fascinating to see what the next Luxury Car Report tells us a couple of months from now.

Luxury car buyers are getting younger – the 20-34 age category is up 3 per cent year on year. Average values of Aston Martins, BMWs and Land Rovers are up, while McLarens and Teslas are down. Land Rover owns some 49 per cent of the luxury SUV segment, locking out the top three. So it’s good news for some, but there’s a word of caution: JBR Capital has identified early signs of ‘malaise or stagnation’ in the market – we’ll know much more when the next report arrives.

Click here to read the report in full