[imagesource: Maxie Kaan-Lilly]

There’s a bit of a “tribe” forming around luxury car brand Rolls-Royce, and they’re not the grey-haired retirees with old money that you might have imagined.

Rather, Rolls-Royce’s customer base has segued into a much younger, career-driven clientele, with people who have enough money to dish out on a luxury car as an investment in themselves.

One such person is 30-year-old South Florida real estate agent and model, Maxie Kaan-Lilly, with her Rolls-Royce Dawn above.

She says her $350 000 (almost R5,4 million) white convertible is her “ride-or-die” as it fulfils two roles: being a mark of success and a tool for business.

She says she is proud when she sees her clients’ impressed expressions after she picks them up at the airport and drives them to tour a property in comfort and opulence, adding via CNN that:

“Rolls-Royce is the epitome of success,” she said, “so when I got to that point in my career I decided it’s an investment I wanted to make because it’s an investment in yourself, really.”

Kaan-Lilly is just one of Rolls-Royce’s many new young buyers:

When it recently announced its record-breaking 2021 sales — about 5,600 vehicles sold worldwide — Rolls-Royce also announced the average age of its customers, in the United States and globally, is just 43 years old. That means many buyers are also much younger than that, like in their 20s or 30s.

…Data collected by the consulting firm IHS Markit during the third quarter of 2021 shows that Rolls-Royce had a higher percentage of buyers under age 45 than many other luxury and exotic brands, including Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Lexus, and even Lamborghini.

Spectrem Group, a consulting firm that studies wealthy investors, conducted a recent survey that showed how most people with a net worth of over $25 million are, on average, 48 years old.

Meanwhile, people with between $1 million and $25 million in net worth are, on average, about 62.

So one of the reasons Rolls-Royce is all the rage with younger careerists is down to the age gap between the rich and the super-rich.

Rolls-Royce buyers also tend to be entrepreneurs, elite athletes, and entertainers, Spectrem Group Director Randy Wostratzky said.

AKA the kind of folks who want to look good, and don’t mind spending a pretty penny to do so.

Another factor contributing to this new trend is that Rolls-Royce’s products have changed a lot over the last couple of decades:

“They made it into a much, I don’t want to say ‘sporty,’ but sleeker, much cooler version of Rolls-Royce,” Milton Pedraza, CEO of the Luxury Institute, a marketing consulting firm, said of the brand’s new models

Think of the Ghost, a fresh, minimalist design that the brand likes to call ‘Post Opulance’ – the perfect phrase to make the young, tech-savvy folks out there absolutely froth.

There’s also the terribly cool Spectre, marking the beginning of Rolls-Royce’s EV journey as the company plans to make its entire lineup electric by 2030.

To really throw the luxury car brand in with the influencers, entrepreneurs, and entertainers, there’s a content app called Whispers.

It provides opportunities to interact with other owners and offers things like special travel packages:

“It’s just unbelievable,” says Kaan-Lilly, “I mean, just networking, meeting friends, clients.”

“You want to know that the people you are meeting are safe and are your tribe,” he said. “That’s just the way the world has clustered.”

What some might call clique-ish, others, particularly Rolls-Royce owners, call leaning into your wealth and power with pride.

Sigh, must be nice.

[source:cnn]