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Despite premium carmakers going downmarket, luxury auto sales stick at 10-11%

According to research conducted by global information company IHS Automotive, the leporine birthing of new models by luxury manufacturers over the past six years hasn't increased their market share in the US. Even as car sales reached 15.6 million units, IHS says what's happened instead is that luxury buyers are merely moving from one brand to another, moving from larger luxury vehicles into hot segments like compact luxury crossovers or leaving the market at the same rate as other buyers enter.
Whether broken out by makes or by segment, market share has rollercoastered inside a narrow band from 10.5 to 11.5 percent since "at least" 2008. Closer investigation reveals the shifting boundaries in the aspirational pond, with brands like Mercedes-Benz and Audi gaining territory as Lexus and Lincoln lost it, and Saab and Hummer were buried, dead, under it. One neat note is that Tesla has gone from a share of zip to .12 percent.
The subcompact and compact crossover segments show growth, with those little high-riders jumping from .3 percent to 1.16 percent of overall industry sales. Their rise, though, is concomitant with the decline of four other segments: compact and midsize cars and fullsize cars and SUVs. We think the next few years that will tell if the small-car expansion can overcome the large-car retraction, with a phalanx of smaller offerings like the CLA only recently hitting the market and others like the GLA, Macan and Q1 doing so in the near future.

Jack Olsen built one Porsche to do it all

Jack Olsen has built himself a lair called the 12-Gauge Garage, and inside that garage he built a lairy Porsche 911 nicknamed Black Beauty II. Although it looks like one of Stuttgart's models from the sixties or seventies, it is actually four decades of 911 gubbins from 1965 to 2000 thrown under one shell: the lightweight body is from 1972, the transaxle from 1977, the brakes from a 1986 Turbo, the engine from 1995, for example. It weighs 2,400 pounds and it's got 272 horsepower to get it going, but it's still a pure Porsche, Olsen saying, "If you stop thinking about what you're doing, it will remind you in very abrupt ways."
Olsen said the real point has been to have one car that does it all, so he does everything in his 911 from neighborhood runs to 7-11 to track racing - he loads the aero bits in the car and bolts them on trackside. And he says he'll never stop tweaking the suspension.
You can watch and hear the rest in Olsen's words in the video below.

Porsche Australia price cuts in excess of $36,000 irks customers

Have you ever gone to the store, only to become irked after learning that the new [*insert widget here*] that you bought just last week has gone through a price drop? If you're particularly thrifty, even if it's only a couple of bucks, you probably brought in your receipt to see if the store would issue you a credit for the difference. Now, imagine that the widget in question isn't a minor purchase, it's a Porsche - and the price drop isn't just a few bucks - it's thousands.
That's the unhappy scenario that recently faced a number of Australian luxury car buyers and the uncomfortable conversation awaiting the German automaker. According to GoAuto, Porsche Australia recently whacked up to $36,000 off the price of its models in order to jumpstart sales Down Under - the Panamera range itself saw cuts between $5,500 and more than $36,000. The aggressive price cut was a strategy designed to drive sales of more than 3,000 cars locally, a yearly goal originally set for 2018, but now hoped for as early as 2016.
Australia is known for its comparatively high car prices, so the dramatic price cuts were undoubtedly welcome news to potential Porsche shoppers. However, around 50 existing customers were understandably agitated by the reductions because they purchased their cars just before the adjustments took effect. Not only did they stand to lose out on the deals, they also had good reason to fear that their new cars' residual values would take a beating.