[bird]

Straight from the Horses Mouth, Ian Robertson, BMW's head of sales:

The sports car market is roughly half of what it used to be,” Ian Robertson, BMW’s head of sales, said in an interview at the manufacturer’s headquarters in Munich. “Post-2008, it just collapsed. I’m not so sure it’ll ever fully recover.”

 

[jetblack]

I think it could recover but it's going to be a while.
I see a lot of these partnership builds as a way to cut losses and test what works in the real world which already has proven worthy from their observations. Maybe as things pick up we will see more 'stand-alone' builds from brands.
So in BMW's case, maybe the Z4 after the one coming up will be all BMW and no Toyota.

 

[DacotaM]

Like a year has passed from this thread started in 2014 and the sports car market is not recovering. Seems like Ian Robertson was true...

 

[Seriesous]

Regardless of the market, seems like the car industry is still coming out with new sports cars like the Maserati Alfieri or the NSX.

 

[loftdan]

new cars will always be coming

 

[MPWR]

new cars will always be coming

Would be scary if/when that happens!

 

[Seriesous]

New cars yes but not always sports cars. Hard to tell with the current market because the posrts cars you listed had a hard time or is having a hard time with going into production.

Alfieri has been delayed and the NSX took a few years before making it's production debut.

 

[MPWR]

What I can make of the industry when it comes to bringing sports cars to market, there has to be enough volume going on elsewhere for them to justify the move.

 

[webbrowan]

Sports cars have their own specific niche market that acts like the flagship product of a particular manufacturer. Hence, it is not surprising for the entire industry to go down concurrently due to poor market demand. When the sector improves, the same situation will apply for all other manufacturers as well.

 

[SeriesX]

Now are we considering super-cars as sports cars as well, or are we separating that classification ?