BERLIN: German automobile manufacturer, Porsche, is focusing to increase supplies of its new diesel-powered Macan crossover to US dealers in 2015.
After the Porsche officials met with U.S. dealers, Joe Lawrence, chief operating officer of Porsche Cars North America, said “We’re certainly pushing because it’s been a big success; we’re having some issues with customers having to wait longer than we would like, and we don’t want to lose those customers.”
Wait times for Macan buyers have been six months or more since it went on sale last May. U.S. dealers are looking forward to getting more Macans this year and getting them into the hands of buyers more quickly. A diesel-powered Macan is also expected near the end of the year.
“We’re going to expand that Macan number,” said Mike Sullivan, owner of Pacific Porsche in Torrance, California, and a member of the Porsche Dealer Board of Regents in the U.S. “It’s pretty exciting. We were so limited.”
Lawrence declined to estimate the number of Macans that will be allocated to the U.S. market in 2015. Porsche sold 7,241 Macans during the seven months it was on sale last year.
Though Porsche’s U.S. executives are pushing for higher allocation of the Macan, it’s not confirmed, Lawrence said.
“We would be happy to get more,” he said. “But the factory [in Leipzig, Germany] is constrained, and the worldwide demand is so strong on that car.”
Still, a full year of Macan sales is expected to put Porsche over its goal of selling 50,000 vehicles in the U.S., three years earlier than the 2018 deadline originally set by the automaker. Porsche sold 47,007 vehicles in the U.S. in 2014, an 11 percent annual increase. The overall U.S. market rose 6 percent.
“Our target clearly is to exceed 50,000 this year,” Lawrence said. “We believe we’ll have the production and the right mix to be able to do that. A full year of Macan obviously helps that situation and makes it possible.”
