Recession? What recession? Luxury car sales immune to downturn.

• Author: Schwab, Robert
• Position: Attitude at altitude

DAVID HILL, AN INVESTMENT BANKER who happens to also sell high-priced cars because he likes them, has 34 Colorado orders for a Bentley Continental GT, a $160,000 car that people in the United States won't see until October.

Hill, a British native who also holds Canadian and United States citizenship, is one of three brand managers at Ferrari of Denver/Bentley Denver, a combined luxury-car dealership run by Bill Stewart, who has owned Stewart Classics in south metro Denver for almost 30 years.

The dealership, on County Line Road, east of Broadway in Douglas County, has dozens of luxury cars with brand names like Rolls Royce, Maserati, Bentley and Ferrari of course--and price tags to match: two 2002 model Bentleys are priced on the dealer's Web site at more than $395,000. Each is also designated "Sold."

Hill says the dealer's backlog on orders for a Ferrari 360 is five to six years; on a new Bentley GT Continental, it's two years plus.

"You put down a deposit of $10,000 and wait for the years to roll by and then we call you up and ask you to come in to talk about color and interior because the factory is ready to build your car."

Not that he sees many of the cars he's sold in metro Denver since he came to the dealership about two years ago.

Hill said he is a frequent visitor to California, specifically Beverly Hills, where he can sit at a coffee shop and see all the models on the sales floor of the Colorado dealership drive by on the street.

But here, he said, you rarely see the cars driven on the road.

Yet the...