Macan and Panamera will spear drive for Porsche business car sales

PORSCHE is gathering momentum with its first concerted initiative specifically to identify and target business car users. Porsche’s recently-appointed corporate sales chief  Jonathan Maynard acknowledging that “in the past we have somehow managed to make things pretty difficult for ourselves and our customers.” 

The initiative to focus on business car users specifically comes against the background of record global sales for Porsche and a further diversification of its model ranges into areas of greater potential significance to SME users than its traditional sports cars.

One major development in the range-broadening is its entry into the top end of the burgeoning market for compact SUVs typified by Land Rover’s Evoque  – although Porsche’s competitor, the just-announced Macan, “is very much a sports car as well”, stresses Maynard.

The Macan, which is being built at an all-new production line at the Leipzig plant which began life building the larger Cayenne SUV,  has a planned production rate of up to 50,000 a year – a big volume jump given that Porsche’s global sales record, hit in 2012 , was 120,000 units.

Maynard  is also relishing dangling under the noses of senior-level SME businessmen the new Panamera S E-Hybrid.

Claimed by Porsche to be the world’s first plug-in hybrid for the executive saloon class, the £88,967 four-door four-seater has been formally classified in the UK as an ultra-low emissions vehicle, allowing it to make a pretty serious case for itself to business users.

The Panamera S E-Hybrid’s company car tax rate is a mere 5 per cent but there is a host of other incentives for business users.

The Panamera is exempt from VED, first registration fee and London’s congestion charge. With its 71g/km CO2 emissions it also eligible for a grant of up to £5000 towards the purchase cost, under central government’s Office for Low-Emission Vehicles (OLEV) incentive scheme to encourage “green” vehicles.