Vestigial luxury has its own logic, market

All luxury products are status enhancers. Functionality is a key feature. Being seen with an Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max costing ₹1.9 lakh also provides features considered ‘worth the value’. But a product’s ‘luxury quotient’ alone can be enough for an increasing number of consumers. Even if this vestigial luxury goes against common sense. Take the surge in demand for sunroofs in cars. The movable panel that opens to uncover a window on the roof of a car to ‘let the sky in’ should be the last ‘must get’ feature for car-owners in a country that is beset largely with heat and serious-grade rain. Instead, car air conditioning, having moved from aspirational to a regular feature, makes sense.

But the association with sunroofs and status, driven largely by the fact that nearly 85% of SUVs – themselves seen as a status symbol by a growing middle class – come with sunroof factory- fitted, is logical reasoning enough for a growing demand of its own that manufacturers are recognising and whetting appetites.

The sunroof currently has a price tag of about ₹50,000, an amount that more and more car-buyers of even under-₹10 lakh vehicles are willing to pay on top of the car price. This has led to not just carmakers like Hyundai, Tata Motors and Maruti introducing sunroofs in their hatchback models, but also a spurt in the sunroof-making sector, currently dominated by European companies like Webasto. Indian manufacturers should also start making hay while the sunroof shines. Especially of value will be the high-end ‘panoramic roof system’ that opens above both front and rear seats, but, more importantly, is associated with top-end vehicles from the BMW, Lexus, Porsche and Tesla stables. For, vestigial luxury has a logic – and market – of its own.