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Most modern vehicles are trying to find the equilibrium between performance and luxury in a marketplace that is becoming very saturated with highly capable, luxurious vehicles that are trying to under promise, over deliver, and out perform the competition. In your opinion, what's the best mixture between performance and luxury in a very competitive marketplace? What vehicle best exhibits these attributes? For all reasonable purposes, I'd put a price limit of $100K on the vehicles in question because sure, someone could pay $200K for a Mercedes S65 AMG but it alienates the majority of the marketplace.
In my opinion, BMW as a company uses the formula of 60% performance and 40% luxury while Mercedes is the exact opposite using 60% luxury and 40% performance when designing their vehicles.
I feel the best performance and luxury ratio in the current market would be the Cadillac CTS-V which is probably 65% performance and 35% luxury and can trample the competition handily while delivering its occupants to their destination in style and comfort.
Cadillac has one model that realy pushes the performance envelope, while BMW as a brand has that performance/luxury balance across all their model ranges.
They are all blending to me....brands that used to leverage more to one side now leverage toward the other side. Maybe you haven't driven a recent BMW but they are getting fat, fluffy and less sporty while Audi, Mercedes, Lexus is getting sportier and in some cases better to drive than the BMW.
If anyone to be is blending it perfectly it would be Porsche. Porsche was nothing but sports cars but now is a full blown luxury brand that happens to also make sports cars. Their interiors are incredible and they continue to mostly drive best in class.
I think you are missing another quality - reliability or maintainability. An example is Range Rover. They excel in offroad performance, and are luxurious, but are borderline complete failures in reliability.
Speedy, based on the wording of your OP, it sounded to me like you were going for which one struck the best balance. Then you went and picked the CTS-V, which is hardly balanced, but definitely high on the sport quotient. So, is the question which luxury cars can peel the paint off a Mustang GT while still having seats made out of fancy cowbits, or is it about the best blend of the two?
I tend to agree with Randy that all the brands seem to be morphing a little bit, Audi and Mercedes are getting edgier while BMW is getting softer. It's like they are all trying to reach that perfect balance and that really doesn't have anything to do with 0-60 times and skidpad numbers. To me, it is what manufacturer has cars that perform above average for the class while retaining high levels of fit and finish and the qualities people look for in a luxury car.
To me and I've said it before, that manufacturer is currently Audi. There most recent products are still a notch above BMW on the luxury end, while equalling their performance. Performance that also exceeds what you generally get from Mercedes and Lexus. Cadillac is too heavily weighted to the performance end and while their cars are now able to be mentioned in the same breath as the other brands, they aren't quite there on the parts that make a luxury car a luxury car.
If we built a scale, I'd say it is something like this:
Speedy, based on the wording of your OP, it sounded to me like you were going for which one struck the best balance. Then you went and picked the CTS-V, which is hardly balanced, but definitely high on the sport quotient. So, is the question which luxury cars can peel the paint off a Mustang GT while still having seats made out of fancy cowbits, or is it about the best blend of the two?
I tend to agree with Randy that all the brands seem to be morphing a little bit, Audi and Mercedes are getting edgier while BMW is getting softer. It's like they are all trying to reach that perfect balance and that really doesn't have anything to do with 0-60 times and skidpad numbers. To me, it is what manufacturer has cars that perform above average for the class while retaining high levels of fit and finish and the qualities people look for in a luxury car.
To me and I've said it before, that manufacturer is currently Audi. There most recent products are still a notch above BMW on the luxury end, while equalling their performance. Performance that also exceeds what you generally get from Mercedes and Lexus. Cadillac is too heavily weighted to the performance end and while their cars are now able to be mentioned in the same breath as the other brands, they aren't quite there on the parts that make a luxury car a luxury car.
If we built a scale, I'd say it is something like this:
Yes my original post was to see the consensus on which manufacturer achieved the best balance of luxury and performance.
I mentioned the CTS-V as being my personal favorite because I tend to put a larger emphasis on performance than luxury which is why I weighted it as 65/35. Some may put a larger emphasis on luxury than on the performance aspect.
But I really do like your chart, I guess I haven't driven a BMW in quite a while but the previous ones I've driven were always a bit more sporty than they were luxurious while Mercedes have always been the opposite in my book. Here's my chart, don't mind if I steal your design.
I like NJGoat's chart. However as Merc63 pointed out - the placement for Cadillac is really based on one car - the CTS-V (or CTS Coupe). The rest of Cadillac's line is blingy overweight Chevy/GMC stuff.
I'm going with what NJGOAT said but can't rep him for it at this time. In my own experience, Audi is currently well balanced between both, and that applies to most of the model line. My last was more performance oriented than most but that's more model specific than anything. The entire model line is pretty good--more or less the same seems to go for BMW but I'm not nearly as experienced with BMW and haven't owned one either.
Though Audi may have balanced their cars between "performance" and "luxury", calling their "S" models "performance" is laughable at best.
M and AMG have really been the only serious competitors in the luxury performance segment, with Cadillac slightly behind stealing thunder from them.
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