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NEWS
Macan drives $45 million Porsche expansion
New dealers and bigger dealers required as prestige SUV heads our way in 2014A $45 million dollar-plus dealer network upgrade and expansion is underway as Porsche Cars Australia prepares for the arrival of the Macan compact SUV in the middle of 2014.
The hotly anticipated Macan will be unveiled to the world at the Los Angeles Auto Show in November before going on-sale globally from the European Spring of 2014.
The Macan, which shares much of its technical core with the Audi Q5, will be Porsche’s cheapest model and the cornerstone of the company’s ambition to more than double global sales to 200,000 by 2018.
In Australia, where pricing could start somewhere in the $70,000 bracket, it is expected to play the key role in driving sales from less than 1500 to 3000 by 2016.
In response to that Porsche Cars Australia will definitely appoint a new dealership in far north Queensland, covering Cairns and Townsville and also seems likely to have a third dealership opened in Melbourne in the eastern suburb of Doncaster.
Dealerships in Newcastle (NSW), Geelong (Vic) are under consideration but not considered urgent, as is a second outlet in Perth, capital of the mining boom state Western Australia.
Most existing outlets, including the PCA-owned Collingwood (Vic) site that also doubles as its headquarters, are also undergoing major expansion to cope with the increase in business anticipated once the full six-model Macan range is on-sale in Australia sometime in 2015.
PCA is even considering knocking down the distinctive silos on the Collingwood site, as well as raising the height of the office from two to five stories.
“It will be a major investment in terms of parking in the back, taking silos down, expanding the showroom,” PCA managing director Michael Winkler told motoring.com.au. “Then you have to ask yourself the question, even after you have done all that and built five stories here – if you do that – can you handle 800-1000 cars per year here given road restrictions, access restrictions and all those sorts of things?
“You might be able to create the space but will the traffic flow? The answer to that is probably no, so that is why we will probably put a third dealer into Doncaster.
Winkler estimated total investment across the network was in excess of $45 million, with PCA spending about half of that.
“Some dealers need showroom space, almost all need service space. There are one or two dealers around the country already quite well set up, Brisbane comes to mind. We don’t have to do anything there because they are already big enough to be able to handle that volume. They have to essentially focus their investment on people; apprentices, technicians, things of that nature.”
Once set-up, Winkler said the main challenge of the addition of Macan for dealers would less likely be the new customer groups it will attract than the cars they will want to trade in.
“You are going to find different cars traded in on a base level Macan than you will find on even a Boxster or something like that,” Winkler explained. “But to be honest I am not worried about that because every one of our dealers except one are part of a larger dealer group and they have experience in retailing and wholesaling other segment vehicles.”
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Written byBruce Newton
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