The rich aren’t like normal people, and that’s especially true when it comes to souping up their already luxury vehicles even more.
My guess is the vast majority of people are familiar with aftermarket car parts from TV shows like Pimp My Ride with host Xzibit, and the earlier movies in the Fast & Furious franchise with stars Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, may he rest in peace.
That’s all well and good if your souping up a Honda S2000, or pimping out an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, but you know you’re super wealthy when you step your game up and begin souping up Rolls-Royces and Lamborghinis
There’s a lot of different ways to slice-and-dice the automotive aftermarket industry, but for our purposes we’ll define it as aftermarket parts used to modify a vehicle from the point that the manufacturer produced it. That aftermarket industry in the U.S. was $205.81 billion dollars in 2022 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.1% from 2023 to 2030, and is expected to hit $281.98 billion dollars by 2030, according to Grand View Research.
These days the super-rich aren’t necessarily spending the wrench time doing the actual work themselves to customize their vehicles. Increasingly they’re buying them already customized from Dealerships and the Manufacturers themselves.
Among the highly-customized luxury sports cars discerning collectors are purchasing is the Lamborghini Revuelto Opera Unica, which is the plug-in hybrid supercar with a special hand-applied paint job that took 435 hours to complete. There’s the Rolls-Royce Cullinan SUV that sports mother-of-pearl inlay on a folding tray table that folds down in the back seat. Then there’s the Bugatti Chiron Golden Era, which has a starting retail price of $3 million before you even begin to customize it, but the super-rich now have the option to purchase a custom-decorated gold-painted version of the Chiron with hand-drawn historical scenes of classic Bugattis by the brand’s designers.
The market for these high-end customized rides is small, and comprises a global population of around 400,000 who have at least $30 million dollars in disposable income to spend on a luxury vehicle, but that number is expected to grow to 528,000 people worldwide by 2028.
Like I said, the super-wealth soup up their rides a little differently than some of us used to back in the days of Pimp My Ride and Fast & Furious.
The super-rich are buying more ultra-customized Rolls-Royces and Lamborghinis