If you’ve ever been fortunate enough to spec a brand new Porsche for order, you’d know that Porsche charges money for almost everything. The Stuttgart-based brand makes almost everything an optional extra, even things you’d expect to be as-standard on cars that cost a fraction of the price of a Porsche. Want a rear wiper on a 911? Optional extra. Want more than 4-way power seats on six-figure 911? Optional extra. Want four wheels and a steering wheel? Optional extras. Turns out, though, this business plan is working out for Porsche, as it’s making a killing on each car.
According to AFR, Porsche makes about $17,000 for every car it sells, when averaging the profits on each car. Most of the reason for this is the fact that Porsche sells very expensive cars that start out with very limited options, then charging a ton of money for those options. For instance, a Porsche 911 Carrera S $105,100 to start but has a rather fascinating amount of options, such as the $1,720 painted interior air vent slats.
By comparison, BMW only makes around $5,000 on average, as it sells a significant amount relatively inexpensive cars, like small diesel-engine variants of the 2 Series, 3 Series and 2 Series Active Tourers in Europe. Mercedes-Benz is similar to BMW, as the brand also sells small front-wheel drive diesel vehicles to balance out its high-end expensive cars, so it’s profit margins are about the same as BMW’s. The same likely goes for Audi. Porsche’s cheapest car is the Macan, which starts at $47,500 in the US and still needs to be optioned like crazy to get to Porsche-buyer spec.
So, BMW buyers shouldn’t complain about how expensive its cars get and how much its options are (even though I still will and do because I’m a grouch).
[Source: AFR]
