Lamborghini Posts $47.6 Million Loss, Sales Decline

Conventional thinking is that in times of economic turbulence, companies of non-essential high-end products like Lamborghini would suffer greatly.

For the year of 2008 at least, Lamborghini bucked that, posting both a sales and profit increase. Problems accelerated significantly in 2009 though, and reality set in for everyone - including Lamborghini. Lets take a look at the damage.

Sales declined by some 37.7 percent, to 1,515 cars. That is after a 2.5% increase for 2008 that resulted in 2430 cars sold, Lamborghini's highest figure ever. A 37.7 percent decline was enough to turn a $79.6 million profit to a $47.6 million pretax loss. Ouch!

Lamborghini blames the sales decline on two things: finance industries fell hard last year and many of Lamborghini's customers were in that sector and are no longer able to afford such expensive vehicles. Secondly, at a time of widespread economic difficulty, the insensitivity of people purchasing brand new Lamborghinis while others struggle.

We're inclined to attribute the blame for the losses to the latter - it has always happened the same way in previous times of recession. The good news is that things are looking up for 2010 and given that Lamborghini is a part of a big corporation like the VW Group, it isn't going anywhere anytime soon.