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VW makes $23K on every Porsche sold, more than Bentley or Lamborghini

It's a good time to be in the luxury car business. In Volkswagen Group's financial report for the 2013 fiscal year, it is revealed that that Porsche enjoyed an operating margin of 18 percent. That means the Stuttgart brand made on average about $23,200 per car sold, according to BusinessWeek. Bentley wasn't far behind, and Audi (which was combined with Lamborghini) posted a 10.1 percent margin. This compares to only around 2.9 percent for the Volkswagen brand.
"Luxury brands are on fire," said Dave Sullivan, an industry analyst at AutoPacific. He said that the average profit margin is between six and eight percent. Brands like Porsche and Bentley have the benefit of competing in rarefied markets. Buyers looking at one their vehicles have fewer models to shop against and don't care as much about price. They can also charge more for options, which further boosts income, according to BusinessWeek.
In a way, we should be more impressed by the continued success from Audi. Its models generally have direct competitors in every segment from the other premium automakers. Plus, their buyers aren't the captains of industry who are shopping for a Bentley. Still, the Four Rings is leading rivals in sales so far this year.

2016 Audi A6 First Drive [w/video]

The Audi A6 could be seen as a singular kind of sleeper. It sells in volumes that are one-half to one-third those of its German competition. The sedan doesn't command a conversation much less the imagination, its history bereft of iconic brand identifiers. Think of the way the E28 BMW 5 Series turned the segment into something to be proud of, or those double headlamps from the W210 Mercedes-Benz E-Class, or that other E from 1986 simply known as Der Hammer. There is currently no RS6 sedan in the US to draw halo attention to the clan. And it was the first in its segment to slip into a design lassitude such that you had to check the badge to make sure it wasn't a different Audi. However, I look at the A6 from the other side: it's an underappreciated gem. With the 3.0-liter supercharged V6, it's a thoroughly fun steer. It has more power and torque than the competition. I think it has the finest interior. It's probably my favorite sedan in the segment considering how many boxes it checks before you cross the bridge to things that begin with S, M, and AMG. But you have to get to know an Audi in order to comprehend what it possesses, and the "product improvement" rolled out for the 2016 A6 won't change that. I'll call these "blind spot updates," because someone needs to point out where they are, and even then you've got to work to see them. Nevertheless, they're there, in places like the wider grille, new headlights and taillights with revised LED DRL signatures, new bumpers, side sills, rockers, and trapezoidal tailpipe finishers. The interior and driver assistance systems get gussied-up. The interior and driver assistance systems get gussied-up, too. The base A6 2.0T can be had with driver aids now – Audi pre-sense comes standard, the night vision assistant will identify animals, and the blind spot monitor works with lane keep assist to give you even more warning before changing lanes. There are two new colors and new inlays, like the layered walnut on the tester I drove, which is an upper-tier luxury feature that's finally filtered downstream. The biggest interior rework comes via the MMI system, which gets the Nvidia Tegra 3 quadcore chip pushing graphics to a retractable, eight-inch touchscreen. The additional processing power allows for new features like expanded codec playback – you can now play uncompressed .flac files straight through the stereo.

The Audi R8 e-tron is dead with less than 100 built

According to a report from Car and Driver, the Audi R8 e-tron is dead (again!) after fewer than 100 examples of the all-electric model were built. This is an anticlimactic end to what could be termed an e-saga, with enough twists and turns to make a Hollywood scriptwriter sit up and start pecking out a screenplay. But here's the important number to keep in mind: 100. That's the production number the R8 e-tron failed to reach. The final tally is less than that, an Audi rep told Car and Driver. And what few were built were sold furtively, and only in Europe, in a strange back-channel in which dealers referred potential buyers right to Audi HQ, says the report. All of these transactions happened without the benefit of an online configurator or any published materials, we understand. That doesn't sound like a recipe for wild success – and neither did the $1,000,000+ pricetag. And this is just the latest stumbling block for the R8 e-tron, which was cancelled the first time back in 2012 when it was still based on the sinister, classic shape of the first-generation R8. If you recall, there was some confusion about the limited run of those first-generation cars, which were initially tipped to be sold to the public. In a strange move, Audi walked that back and held onto the cars for "internal purposes." So it was, until 2015, when we saw the second-generation R8 e-tron in Geneva. Audi promised it'd go on sale in 2015 "upon customer request," which was some foreshadowing to the unusual dealership referral sales model we discussed above. Nonetheless, it seemed like it would be a supremely interesting electric sportscar, with 456 horsepower, 679 pound-feet of torque, a 0-62 mph time of 3.9 seconds, and a range of up to 280 miles. Alas, except for the fewer than 100 European owners who managed to take delivery before Audi yanked the cord, the R8 e-tron's emissionless charms will go unappreciated. We're hoping to get more specific confirmation from Audi about the nature of the cancellation and the exact number produced; until then, stay tuned. Related Video: