Porsche Panamera to weather sales slump

Porsche SE predicted the Panamera sedan, its first new model line in seven years, will help the German maker of 911 sports cars reverse a trend of declining luxury sales.

"Despite the difficult conditions we are all experiencing right now, we maintain our firm objective to sell at least 20,000 units" annually, Klaus Berning, Porsche’s sales chief, said at a briefing before the Shanghai International Auto Show.

Porsche is relying on the Panamera, its fourth model line and the first addition since the Cayenne sport-utility vehicle in 2002, to help stave off a further sales decline. Stuttgart, Germany-based Porsche’s first-quarter U.S. sales dropped 27 percent and plunged 36 percent in the U.K.

Porsche Panamera unveiled on 2009 Shanghai auto show opening day April 20

The Panamera, which cost 1 billion euros ($1.29 billion) to develop and is the carmaker’s first four-person sedan, will compete with Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz CLS and Fiat SpA’s Maserati Quattroporte.

"We would obviously have been happy to introduce the Panamera in times of better conditions," Berning said.

Porsche expects 90 percent of Panamera customers to be new to the brand. The U.S., Europe and rest of the world will each generate about one-third of the model’s sales, he said.

The company will introduce the car in China in January and plans to sell 2,000 units by July. The country is home to 825,000 people each with an estimated net worth of at least 10 million yuan ($1.5 million), according to the Hurun Report.

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