Porsche reportedly expects to increase sales to 200,000 cars or more this year, hitting a long-planned target three years early, after posting record deliveries in 2014.
December sales surged 39% year on year 20,644 units, boosting full year deliveries 17% to a record 189,849, the automaker told Reuters on Thursday.
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Over two-thirds of Porsches sold are SUVs thanks to the new Macan launched last April, the sales data showed.
About 34,000 of the 45,000 customers who bought the Macan were new to the brand and previously owned a BMW Mercedes or other rival, chief executive Matthias Mueller told Reuters at Porsche HQ in Stuttgart.
Separately, Mueller, 61, previously top product strategist at parent VW, ruled himself out as a potential successor to group CEO Martin Winterkorn.
Winterkorn, 67, stoked speculation about his departure in an interview last October when he noted that when his contract expires in December 2016 he would be 69 and old enough to quit.
“I am not a potential successor to Winterkorn,” Mueller told Reuters. “I am too old for the job. It is no solution for VW to put a 63 year old at the helm in 2016,” he said, adding he had already communicated the message at VW headquarters.
Porsche, which contributed 20% of VW group’s nine-month operating profit of EUR9.4bn (US$11.06bn), could see its operating margin drop to 13% of sales temporarily, from about 17%-18%, because of spending on fuel efficiency and connectivity, Mueller told the news agency.
The carmaker is targeting an operating margin of at least 15% over a five year period.
