German performance models still selling up a storm

Australia’s love affair with high-performance luxury cars and SUVs remains strong despite the overall market and the prestige segment slumping in 2018 – and our Draconian speed enforcement and log-jammed traffic in major cities.

Australia’s luxury vehicle market is down even more so than the overall industry so far this year (down 1.9 per cent), with Audi off 10.7 per cent, BMW down 3.4 per cent and Mercedes-Benz 12 per cent behind.

But a surprisingly high number of buyers are still prepared to spend more on hotted-up luxury vehicles.

Current figures have Mercedes-AMG sales tracking at 20 per cent of total Mercedes-Benz passenger car (non-commercial) sales here, making Australia the number-one market for AMG globally per capita.

The importance of the Australian market was underlined by the company opening the world’s first AMG showroom in Sydney last year.

BMW’s M performance vehicles also remain popular, with the proportion of M models to regular BMWs sold in the Australia running at 5.8 per cent to the end of September.

This is down nine per cent on last year, but BMW Australia spokesman Adam Davis said: “With the M2 moving to the Competition variant and M3/M4 nearing end of its life cycle, as well as X5 M ceasing production, a softening could reasonably be expected as customers await the new models.”

While Australia is the world’s number one destination for both Mercedes-AMG and BMW M sales in terms of market share, Audi Sport is the latest premium performance sub-brand to highlight Australians’ penchant for luxury sports cars and SUVs.

Australia is among the top six markets globally for sales of Audi Sport models (RS and R8). If you throw Audi’s S models into the mix one-fifth — or about 3500 vehicles — of all Audis sold here are performance models

Audi Australia public relations manager Shaun Cleary said that Australia was one of Audi Sport’s best sales regions.

“We come in as sixth for global sales for Audi Sport [sales], but for overall sales we’re about 11th. So you can see that we punch above our weight in those performance models,” he said.

“Audi Sport doesn’t include the S models, but if you include those as well – so for example the SQ5 [the most popular model in the Q5 range] and SQ7 -- last count we did S and RS accounted for 20 per cent of Audi sales. Every fifth Audi is a performance car.”

The local popularity of Audi Sport models has grown rapidly, with Australia reaching the top 10 for Audi Sport sales just three years ago when Audi’s quattro brand was renamed as Audi Sport and only RS and R8 models were included.

Australia usually lags behind Europe and the US because of shipping times and because its overall sales are well down the list for overall Audi volume, so we don’t usually get the first cars of a new model run.

“Generally we launch our models about six months after Europe -- that’s the normal timeframe,” said Cleary. “You’ve got to allow three months for shipping, but also for the fact that we’re usually not first off the line in production.”

However, the volume of RS and S performance models ordered by Australia is not lost on Audi HQ, said Cleary.

“We actually launched the RS 3 sedan in Australia before the international launch in Europe, because it’s such an important performance market for Audi Sport that we obviously had that priority for them. And that wasn’t just a Euro-centric launch -- it was popular in the US as well.”

Audi Sport’s RS model portfolio is growing, its current line-up totaling nine models and comprising the RS 3 hatch and sedan, the TT RS Coupe and Roadster, and the RS 4 Avant, RS 5 Coupe and Sportback, RS 6 Avant, RS 7 Sportback and RS Q3.

Last year, Audi Sport said it would produce 16 new models by 2020, so expect replacements for the RS 6 and RS 7, based on this year's new A6 sedan and A7 Sportback, plus RS versions of Audi's first three battery-electric models due by 2021 (starting with this year's e-tron SUV and followed by the 2019 e-tron Sportback crossover), a new-generation Q3 RS and perhaps even the first RS 1 based on this year's new A1 Sportback.

As for sporty models of the brand’s new flagship SUV, the Q8, Audi already showed the world a 350kW hybrid S concept version (pictured) and there are also rumours of a 500kW/850Nm V8 petrol RS Q8 in the works.

Cleary said Audi Australia will be putting its hand up for any such premium performance SUVs. He said models traditionally considered as sporty, such as the Audi TT RS sports car or the Audi S8 sports limo, were no longer the only cars that stir the performance soul of Aussie buyers.

“Any performance model we’re very keen to bring to Australia,” he said. “We know there’s an established market for it here across the board and cars like SQ5 and SQ7 have proven that while performance SUVs aren’t the traditional interpretation of a sports car, they are the modern interpretation of a sports car.

“There’s certainly room for such sporty [SUV] derivatives here, and we’ve seen in concepts what that would look like,” he said.