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VW makes $23K on every Porsche sold, more than Bentley or Lamborghini

It's a good time to be in the luxury car business. In Volkswagen Group's financial report for the 2013 fiscal year, it is revealed that that Porsche enjoyed an operating margin of 18 percent. That means the Stuttgart brand made on average about $23,200 per car sold, according to BusinessWeek. Bentley wasn't far behind, and Audi (which was combined with Lamborghini) posted a 10.1 percent margin. This compares to only around 2.9 percent for the Volkswagen brand.
"Luxury brands are on fire," said Dave Sullivan, an industry analyst at AutoPacific. He said that the average profit margin is between six and eight percent. Brands like Porsche and Bentley have the benefit of competing in rarefied markets. Buyers looking at one their vehicles have fewer models to shop against and don't care as much about price. They can also charge more for options, which further boosts income, according to BusinessWeek.
In a way, we should be more impressed by the continued success from Audi. Its models generally have direct competitors in every segment from the other premium automakers. Plus, their buyers aren't the captains of industry who are shopping for a Bentley. Still, the Four Rings is leading rivals in sales so far this year.

The Windsor Castle Concours d'Elegance in pictures, courtesy of Bentley

Bentley went to the Windsor Castle Concours of Elegance as the main sponsor and showed off six of its best among the gathering of "60 of the finest motor cars in the world," including the 4¼-liter Bentley 'Embiricos' Special built for a Greek shipping magnate and gentleman racer in the 1930s.
Even better, for us at least, is that when Bentley decided to capture the moment it took pictures of most of the metal on the lawn, not just the Bentleys. Thanks to that, we have a high-res gallery that's home to rarities like the Vauxhall 30-98 Type OE Boattail Wensum Tourer, beauties like the Bugatti Type 57S Atalante, long-tail Ford GT40, Maserati Tipo 60 Birdcage, Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato, a sinister Ferrari 250 GTO and the even more sinister Rolls-Royce Phantom Aerodynamic Coupe, among others. All you need to do now is click and enjoy.

2013 Bentley Continental GTC V8

Despite having a rich history of creating comfortable cars for the chauffeured elite, Bentley has also had an edge on performance that its former compadres at Rolls-Royce could not come close to. Because while the Rollers may have been the better cars to be driven in (and some would argue, they still are), the Bentleys were better to drive.
That's still true to this day, where the company, now situated under the umbrella of the Volkswagen Group, still offers all the same luxury and refinement as before, but it also includes even better drivability than before. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Continental range, where a full line of turbocharged 12-cylinder and Speed models are on offer, to say nothing of older Supersports models that were offered and the company's newest venture into the world of racing, the GT3.
But below the Speed cars and the other W12 cruisers, Bentley now offers eight-cylinder power in its Continental range. And despite this more focused approach to offering something a bit more frugal and efficient, it still has quite the focus on driver involvement. We recently spent a week under the summer sun in this droptop V8 GTC to experience just that.