Like Maxi Kan-Lily, a 30-year-old South Florida real estate agent and model. She said that her Rolls-Royce Dawn is her only car and she takes it everywhere.
“It’s my ride or die,” he said of his white convertible.
Dawn’s prices start at more than $350,000 before any options are made, and Kan-Lily considers her car both a tool for success and business, she said. Customers are impressed when she picks them up at the airport and prompts them to tour a property in the comfort and opulence of Rolls-Royce, she said.
“Rolls-Royce is the epitome of success,” she said, “so when I got to that point in my career I decided it was an investment I wanted to make because it’s really an investment in you.”
Few other car brands have an average buyer age as low as Rolls-Royce. Rolls-Royce is owned by BMW, which also owns the British brand Mini. According to BMW, the average age of a Mini buyer in the US is 52, and about 55 for the BMW brand itself.
Data collected by consulting firm IHS Markit during the third quarter of 2021 shows that Rolls-Royce has a close comparison to several other luxury and foreign brands including Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Lexus and even Lamborghini. The percentage of buyers below 45 years of age was higher.
This may be due, in large part, to the age gap between the rich and the super-rich. The people in Rolls-Royce’s target market – who have enough money to spend more than a third to half a million dollars on a car – are younger than just the wealthy. Recent surveys by Spectrum Group, a consulting firm that studies wealthy investors, show that people with net worth between $1 million and $25 million are on average around 62 years old. Those with a net worth of more than $25 million are on average 48 years old.
Spectrum Group director Randy Vostratsky doesn’t speculate on the reasons behind the age difference, but the difference fits with the way Rolls-Royce America CEO Martin Frich describes the brand’s customers. Rolls-Royce buyers tend to be entrepreneurs, elite athletes and entertainers, he said. He doesn’t describe people who only had well-paying jobs and who had meticulously saved and invested over many years, although there are some of them. Rolls-Royce customers, for the most part, make their money when they are still young enough to enjoy it. And they are not waiting.
“We have a lot of new athletes, and so on,” said Lonnie Soza, president of Rolls-Royce dealer Post Oak Motor Cars in Houston. “In the past, these would be established MVPs and so on. These are young people who are just coming to the scene.”
Milton Pedraza, CEO of Luxury Institute, a marketing consulting firm, said of the brand’s new, “They made it into a much more, I don’t want to say ‘sporty’, but more attractive version of a Rolls-Royce model.
Most important, though, were two additions to the lineup, according to Rolls-Royce and its dealers. First introduced in 2019 is the Cullinan SUV. It is attracting younger customers, especially those with families, Friches said. In addition to its practicality as an SUV, it fits in better with other vehicles on the road today and feels less ostentatious than a large sedan.
Fadi Zaya, a 36-year-old Los Angeles-based luxury car consultant—he helps wealthy clients buy rare ultra-luxury cars—bought himself a Rolls-Royce Cullinan, even though he admits, he didn’t like it at first. . Now it is his favourite.
“I know other people in the younger generation who prefer SUVs because it just feels youthful,” he said.
In her SUV, Zaya got one of Rolls-Royce’s popular options, a “Starlight Headliner” on the roof that twinkles with tiny lights like stars in the night sky. They were adapted, however, so that the “stars” were arranged to resemble the sky on the night of his birth, he said. (By default, the Starlight headliner is arranged to resemble stars above the Rolls-Royce factory on the night the first BMW-owned Phantom was produced in 2003.)
According to dealers and company officials, another factor bringing in young buyers is the Black Badge option package. On the Rolls-Royce Black Badge versions, most of the chrome parts, such as the grille and the Spirit of Ecstasy statue that rides above it, are made with dark, smoky blacked chrome. The suspension on these models has also been tuned for slightly sportier handling, though – this is a Rolls-Royce, after all – the emphasis is on a silky-smooth ride.
The Black Badge option was specifically designed to attract younger buyers who want something less flashy than the traditional shiny chrome from Rolls-Royce, and it seems to be working. It’s growing in popularity, said Jennifer Stroop, brand manager for Rolls-Royce Beverly Hills.
“We’re seeing more black badge orders than we’ve had in a long time,” Stroup said. “I mean, it’s a $50,000 option. It’s definitely a great option.”
Rolls-Royce recently launched its own social media and content app called Whisper. Available only to Rolls-Royce owners, Whispers’ content is often put into the clever magazines many car brands send to their owners. Whispers also offers opportunities to chat with other owners and offer things like special travel packages.
more than one According to the automaker, a quarter of Rolls-Royce owners in the US are Whisper members, and they tend to be smaller. The app provides entry into the world of others, apparently, of similar taste and bank balance.
“It’s just unbelievable,” “I mean, just networking, meeting friends, clients,” says Kan-Lily.
Padaraja, a luxury brand consultant, said it sounds cliché-ish, but these kinds of things have a strong appeal for people at these levels of wealth and power.
“You want to know that the people you are meeting are safe and are your tribe,” he said. “That’s how the world has clustered.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story contained a photo caption that misidentified the vehicle model of the maxi ear-lily. She owns a Rolls-Royce Dawn.
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