Luxury and exotic cars is a terrible business to be in. Small-volume supercar manufacturers pop in and out of existence every few years, leaving behind tiny production runs of awesome-looking machines and no spare parts.
The only luxury/exotic car manufacturers which have survived are the ones which managed to pick up enough of a history to be bought out by a much larger mass-market brand as a halo. afaik they mostly operate at a loss. Bentley, Lamborghini and Bugatti belong to VW. Ferrari is Fiat. Lotus is Proton, and Rolls-Royce gets passed around like a cheap hooker. Only Aston Martin is currently owned by someone other than another car company, but that may not last.
That's Rolls-Royce plc, the publicly-listed company that mostly makes aircraft engines, not Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, the completely unrelated subsidiary of BMW that makes... well, motor cars.
The history of the two is awfully complicated, but I gather that they've been separate entities since 1973.
Porsche was recently pulled into VW, though Porsche nearly succeeded in buying VW earlier. Mercedes and BMW (but especially Mercedes) are more upper middle class than truly luxury.
Porsche was the most profitable car company in the world prior to the VW takeover debacle.
Ironically, though, it was mostly from selling SUVs instead of sports cars. Which just shows that selling overpriced oversized ego vehicles is the best way to make money in the car business.
Low-end luxury seems to be very profitable, as those three companies demonstrate. They're comfortably away from the cost-cutting at the bottom of the market, but still accessible to a large number of customers.
It was the really high-end cars ($100K+) I was talking about as apparently being unprofitable.
The only luxury/exotic car manufacturers which have survived are the ones which managed to pick up enough of a history to be bought out by a much larger mass-market brand as a halo. afaik they mostly operate at a loss. Bentley, Lamborghini and Bugatti belong to VW. Ferrari is Fiat. Lotus is Proton, and Rolls-Royce gets passed around like a cheap hooker. Only Aston Martin is currently owned by someone other than another car company, but that may not last.