When it comes to luxury, wealth, art, (and excess), Art Basel Miami tends to check all the boxes.
The rich flock to South Florida for the annual year-end art fair that goes through this weekend, and while in recent years the market has been a little soft, it seems the crowds, and their high-priced purchases, are back.
Not surprisingly, high-end automakers like BMW, Bentley, Jaguar (which is another story), and Lamborghini have used Art Basel Miami to launch new initiatives and connect with their ultra-wealthy clients.
Lamborghini used the occasion to unveil a one-of-one art car version of its Urus SE hybrid SUV. While it is intended for one choice client, CEO Stephan Winkelmann is looking to entice other buyers as well.
“[Art Basel Miami] is more and more something which is important for us because the combination of exclusive cars, and being also somehow a canvas for artists, is growing,” Winkelmann said in an interview with Yahoo Finance.
Miami being in the US is a big factor, as it is the top market for the Italian luxury automaker, with Florida the second-biggest market for Lamborghini in the country, following California.
Winkelmann said Lamborghini’s performance here and across the globe has been quite strong.
“I think that we are in the best shape ever. We are after the first nine months having record deliveries, we have record [revenue], and also, most importantly, record operating profit,” he said.
Global deliveries through Q3 hit 8,411 vehicles, up 8.6% from a year ago, with revenue up 20.1% to 2.43 billion euros ($2.56 billion), according to Lamborghini’s third quarter update.
There are, of course, hiccups in some regions, including China.
China is currently in a “crisis” due to weakness in the domestic real estate market, Winkelmann said, but Lamborghini is fortunate in that it can shift supply to regions like North America and Europe, where demand is still robust.
Furthermore, Winkelmann noted that while the Chinese auto market is the world’s largest, only 10% of luxury automobiles are sold there, meaning for ultra-high-end automakers the impact from China is not as large compared to larger, mainstream carmakers.
As for its outlook in the US, the prospect of tariffs coming for luxury European automobiles isn’t a concern, at least for the moment. Winkelmann has said in the past that he is for a free-trade world, and for now the company is doing business as usual, meaning it isn’t pushing forward imports.
Doing business as usual for Lamborghini means hybridization too. The company laid out its electrification plans a few years back, and now all three products on sale — the Revuelto hypercar, Temerario supercar, and Urus SE “super SUV” — all use plug-in hybrid power. A fully electric GT car is coming by the end of the decade.
