Bentley CEO Sees Rising Demand For Luxury Cars
(snoop dog must be buying some more bentleys)
FRANKFURT (Dow Jones)--The Chief Executive of Volkswagen AG's (VOW.XE) luxury Bentley brand, Franz Josef Paefgen, said late Thursday he sees big growth potential for cars in the EUR120,000-EUR200,000 price range.
"This market segment should increase to 15,000 cars by 2008," Paefgen told journalists at an evening event in Stuttgart, Germany.
Last year, luxury automakers sold around 8,000 cars in this price range. Paefgen expects more car manufacturers to target this segment soon.
However, Paefgen ruled out that Bentley will launch a car below its current entry-level model Continental, which starts at a price of EUR173,250.
Prices for the U.K. brand's Arnage model line start at around EUR250,000. Last year, Bentley sold around 7,750 Continental and 750 Arnage.
Bentley sells around 45% of its cars in the U.S., making it the biggest market for brand.
Bentley CEO Sees Rising Demand For Luxury Cars -2-
Paefgen said Bentley reached a "very tidy result" last year after just reaching profitability in 2004. He declined to be more specific.
Bentley is part of Volkswagen since 1998 and part of the VW Brand Group together with the core VW, the Czech Skoda brand and Bugatti.
Last week, Europe's largest automaker by sales said the VW Brand Group posted EUR134 million operating profit in the first quarter after an operating loss of EUR53 million in the same period last year.
Paefgen, who took over the helm at Bentley in March 2002 after being the chief executive of Volkswagen's Audi AG (NSU.XE) division, said Bentley wants to improve earnings further in 2006, but won't use its full capacity of building 9,500 cars a year.
Paefgen said part of Bentley's strategy is to always build one car less than it could sell. Bentley won't grant any rebates on its cars to attract customers, he said.
Company Web site: bentley.com
-By Matthias Krust, Dow Jones Newswires; +49 69 29 725 500; matthias.krust@dowjones.com
(Christoph Rauwald contributed to this article)
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 05, 2006 06:27 ET (10:27 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.- - 06 27 AM EDT 05-05-06 |
