A Mercedes pickup? Have we all gone mad?
Is there no end to the avarice? No tradition so sacred that it remains beyond the clutches of the marketers? No convention too consecrated for automakers to breach in their quest for profits?
Why else would Sergio Marchionne, the automotive world’s most famous CEO, be gunning to “merge” with PSA/ PeugeotCitroen, when the ink is barely dry on his takeover of Chrysler?
Why would Maserati, Bentley and — egads, is nothing sacrosanct? — even Rolls- Royce be thinking about producing SUVs? And truly, this must be the end of days; Mercedes- Benz recently announced it is about to produce its first pickup.
Stuttgart seems concerned it has somehow left some pocket unpicked. Now, to be fair to Mercedes, the company already produces very business- like Sprinter vans to much acclaim, and it has not tarnished the company’s reputation here in badge-obsessed North America.
Automotive News reports that ( for now) the German giant isn’t planning to bring said pickup to the United States where the vehicles are the Detroit Three’s strongest segment.
But the fact remains: Mercedes will be selling, if not producing, pickups shortly. And, with the biggest pickup market in the U. S., it probably won’t be long before Bubba from Lubbock is shopping at a Mercedes- Benz dealership.
Mercedes’ motivation, however, is simple to understand. Wherever you look in the automotive world, it’s the luxury nameplates that are thriving, there being no satiating the nameplate- dropping appetites of the rich and nearly rich. Mercedes, Audi and BMW are all enjoying record sales, ( their total production last year exceeded 4.5 million units).
Land Rover has found there is seemingly no limit to what the independently foolish will pay for exclusivity. First came the über-luxurious Autobiography edition of its top- of- the- line Range Rover, next the 550- horsepower SVR version and then Land Rover’s clever engineers combined the two to create the truly outrageous — and lavishly more expensive — SV-Autobiography.
With exclusivity comes huge profit. Porsche’s margins are legendary, the company so flush that it, in the classic guppy- swallowswhale fable, tried to buy out Volkswagen a few years ago.
Ferrari, meanwhile, generates a whopping 13 per cent of Fiat Chrysler’s overall profit, despite accounting for just 0.02 per cent of its worldwide sales.
The lesson is simple: Profits, in the automotive marketplace at least, wear a luxury nameplate.
Nor does profitability come from only high- end models. Besides the SUV- ing of the marketplace, there’s been a headlong race to the bottom, with high- end brands continually pushing the boundaries of what can be considered a “premium” automobile.
Audi’s European A1 is only slightly bigger than a breadbox, the Mercedes CLA’s interior is the very definition of Spartan and BMW is considering hawking a mini- minivan hardly more opulent than Honda’s cut- rate HR- V.
Lest I be labelled a brand snob, let me say I have long been in favour of brand expansion. Unlike so many purists, I believe the Cayenne ( and the Panamera, of course) really did save Porsche from a fate of 911- pigeonholed obscurity.
But a Mercedes pickup? What’s next? A Lamborghini tractor?