PORSCHE OPENS 100TH CHINESE SALES SITE

China also becomes biggest market for the 718 sports car line

China is already Porsche's single biggest market. Last year, Porsche found homes for roughly 70,000 cars in China, only slightly fewer than Porsche's sales for the whole of Europe. Overall, Porsche sold in the region of 250,000 cars worldwide.

Historically, Porsche has sold big numbers of SUVS in China. But now it says China is becoming a major market for sports cars, too. In fact, China is now also the largest single market for the 718 model line. Porsche China sold around 6500 718 Boxsters and Caymans in 2017. Clearly the Chinese have fewer hang ups about the transition from flat-six to flat-four power.

With all that in mind, it's perhaps not a complete surprise to find that Porsche's latest sales site in China counts as its 100th in the country. The new Porsche Studio in the huge metropolis of Guangzhou is an innovative sales concept similar to the Porsche on Sylt site located on the German North Sea island of the same name.

Both locations are designed to allow a more direct and informal contact between Porsche and potential customers. The new Chinese premises are centrally located in a luxury shopping mall, offering customers an insight into the complete range of the brand’s services, both in person and in virtual formats. A major element of the new showroom is the ability to allow customers to configure digital representations of their chosen model via ipad devices and view the results on large format displays.

A Porsche Experience Centre will also be opened in Shanghai in spring 2018. It will be the fourth such location globally, the first of which was the good old UK Experience Centre at Silverstone. It's just another measure by which China is becoming one of if not the most important customers for Porsche.