Limited car credit for luxury cars

The credit crunch has affected the sales of high performance vehicles to the extent that Luxury car maker Bentley is reducing production.

The plant in Crewe plans to reduce shifts and hours for models that have sold slower, a move that will cost at least 50 agency jobs. The car maker, established by Walter Bentley in 1919, planned to reduce the production by 15 per cent through brief to unions yesterday.

Bentley's car range starts from around £115,000 for a new model to up to £230,000 for the most expensive. However, few people are able to gain this amount of car credit in the current climate, so production has been scaled back.

This cutback is the newest in the long line as BMW, Land Rover and Mercedes have all done the same with their least selling models. Models affected by the crunch also include the Porsche 911 along with 12-cylinger models by Audi, Mercedes and BMW, down 13 percent in the year.

This drop in sales has been down to rising carbon taxes, raised petrol prices and general reluctance due to tough economic conditions.

This goes to show that people of all financial status are not safe from the turbulent economic crisis, whether they require large amounts of car credit or not.