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Weekly Recap: Geneva's splendor reflects growing demand for ultra-luxury cars

Geneva is one of the most glittering auto shows in the world, but the list of high-powered and bespoke luxury cars was decadent this year even by the rich standards of the Swiss exhibition. It's great for enthusiasts to revel in the flame-throwing Aston Martin Vulcan, the racing-inspired elegance of the Bentley EXP 10 Speed 6 concept and the insane performance of the Lamborghini Aventador LP 750-4 Superveloce, but there's a reason for all of this opulence: the luxury market is big business. And it's growing. IHS Automotive forecasts that so-called ultra-premium sales will nearly triple this decade from 123,000 to 353,000 units around the world. The estimate includes brands like Aston Martin, Bentley, Ferrari and Rolls-Royce, but doesn't count BMW, Mercedes and Audi, which offer less expensive models in addition to their high-end flagships. Though IHS includes Porsche and its relatively large volume in the study, the ultra-premium segment is still set grow at about the same rate, even without the German automaker's figures. So what is propelling all of this growth in the most expensive segment of the auto industry? Put simply, there's more rich people. IHS Automotive principal analyst Tim Urquhart pointed to economic expansion in China, market recovery in the United States and a surge in the lucrative technology sector as contributing factors. This dovetails with a research report by UK-based Oxfam, an international relief organization, which found the world's richest one-percent owned 48 percent of global wealth in 2014, and it's expected to increase to more than 50 percent by 2016. View 17 Photos Carmakers are moving quickly to capitalize with new products, expanding their portfolios with low-volume speedsters like the 800-hp V12 Vulcan at Geneva, and plans to enter new segments, like Rolls-Royce's strategy to make an SUV. "Ultra-premium carmakers are looking to explore ways of growing their product offerings, and thus their bottom lines, in this most potentially profitable of segments," Urquhart wrote in a report on the Geneva show. In a nutshell, there are more choices for people with more money. It's a good time to have expensive taste. Other News & Notes 2016 Mazda MX-5 Miata production launches It won't be long now. The 2016 Mazda MX-5 Miata arrives later this year, and it's officially in production. Mazda announced this week that the roadster began rolling off the assembly line at its Ujina factory in Hiroshima, Japan.

Police find lion cub in Lamborghini on Champ-Elysses

Paris police found a lion cub inside a green Lamborghini last night. The Lamborghini and the cubs' reported owner were sitting near the Champs-Elysses when bystanders alerted the police of what they thought was a lion cub in a car. These people were right, because the police officers found the 33-year-old man in the Lamborghini taking selfies with the lion cub. According to reports, authorities took the driver into custody and gave the lion to the 30 Million Friends Foundation (animal rescue foundation). The Lamborghini didn't even belong to the lion owner — it was a rental, possibly explaining the lack of concern for the Lamborghini's leather-extensive interior (with the claws, and all). We still don't know which Lambo the lion was charioted (trafficked?) around in, but the Aventador would be our best guess. Nobody that owns a lion is going to drive around in the cheaper Lamborghini, especially if it's a rental. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. To thicken the plot, police say the man named his lion Putin, but it has since been renamed Dadou. Although, one has to expect things like this from people who keep exotic animals as play things. France seems to have an ongoing problem with lions being kept as pets. This past month, a man was sentenced to six months in prison for attempting to sell a lion cub. The government is also currently investigating the presence of three other lion cubs in Paris suburbs. Needless to say, we here at Autoblog urge everyone to refrain from toting lion cubs around in cars, exotic supercars or otherwise. We also dissuade the transport of jaguars, pumas, tigers, ocelots and those tiny jungle cats in South America shown on Planet Earth that really just look like house cats. Actually, just letting a house cat roam around your car seems like a terrible idea. Related video:

Another Lamborghini Veneno for sale, this time for only $8m

There are some cars you expect to see coming up for sale often in the used car listings. Civics, RAV4s, F-150s... you know, the kind of car that they build by the thousand, build to sell, and build to last. More attention-grabbing for us, though, is when we see multiples of a rarer model coming up time and again in the same place. Like the Lamborghini Veneno, for example. The factory in Sant'Agata only made three of these coupes for public consumption, and each of them sold for about $4 million. So we were surprised when we saw one pop up on Mobile.de with a whopping $11 million price tag. But we were even more surprised to see another one for sale on the same site, just weeks later. Pictured with red details (instead of white like the last one), this example is listed as the first of the three made, with only 100 kilometers (62 miles) on the odometer. Its owner is asking ˆ7.1 million – equivalent to nearly $8 million at current exchange rates. That's about twice what Lamborghini charged in the first place, four times what it charged more recently for the new Centenario, and twenty times the price of the Aventador on which they're all based. But it's still a heck of a lot less than the $11 million asked for the last one. Of course, the seller can ask for however much he or she wants, but actually getting that price is quite another matter. Part of us gets the feeling that if someone were really that interested, the listings wouldn't still be up for weeks now. The other part is surprised some squillionaire somewhere in the world hasn't ponied up an even $20 million to take both home already. Related Video: