Porsche registrations down 42% in January

[mark-yorkshire]

Autocar reporting U.K. Porsche registrations down in January. Notwithstanding a fair bit of dealer preregistrations last month the overall registrations in January were still down 42% compared with January 2018.

[Tim92gts]

Was there availability?

[Panthera]

Could a lot of this be due to folks waiting to order the revised Macan & the new 911?

[Paul]

Possibly. Little or no build in Q3 / Q4 2018, push for year-end regs in Dec 2018 and a patchy supply so far in 2019 with WLTP regs still in their infancy.....

[Pivot]

I hear that Porsche UK have aggressive plan for 2019 and are planning major offensive campaign. Hopefully, Brexit doesn’t derail the plans, but anyway, it would affect most importers.

[Semerka]

As it happens, I was looking at the Volvo website last night and they do still offer a lot of choice in diesel engines across their range, whereas Porsche don't. Perhaps diesel fuel is not dead yet and it is still the choice of fuel for mile munchers and CO2 conscious drivers, so they just moved elsewhere. Also the new Volvo's do look good and are solid, luxury cars.

Or perhaps people just realized that they do not need a brand new car every year and the market is saturated.

[mark-yorkshire]

I hear that Porsche UK have aggressive plan for 2019 and are planning major offensive campaign. Hopefully, Brexit doesn’t derail the plans, but anyway, it would affect most importers.

Maybe Porsche AG need to stop supplying their dealerships with large numbers of high spec 2.0 Macans at £60,000 plus which will be difficult to sell without heavy discounting.

[VanB]

Porsche has suffered a "double or maybe triple whammy" in my view. Lack of production in the second half of last year and poor deliveries so far in 2019, having scrapped diesel (which is generally the fuel choice of the 4x4 market) they will have lost out on a lot of traditional buyers and WLTP may also have played a part in delaying deliveries.

Most probably the dropping of diesel will have the largest ongoing effect on shipments.

The V8 diesel in the Panamera and Cayenne was an epic engine and a really sad loss to the company.

[Triple7]

Dealers simply didn’t have anything to sell end of 2018....also hear that UK will be getting a lot more supply for 2019....

[Deleted User 1874]

Plenty of good rationale behind the low Porsche Jan sales, but what about Audi? Are their lower sales down to WLTP compliance, people buying alternative cars or just a general downturn in the economy? Well a quick look at the news suggests an overall year on year decline of only 1.6% across the market, with diesels 20% down, petrols 7% up and electrics 26% up. It's a rapidly changing market for sure.