Luxury car seller Porsche had an embarrassing situation in China, its biggest market, recently after one of its dealers in the country mistakenly advertised a sports car which is worth $148,000 (Rs. 1.21 crore) for just $18,000 (a little over Rs. 14 lakh).
The Porsche dealer in Yinchuan, a town northern China, listed the popular 2023 Panamera model in an online ad for 124,000 yuan ($18,000), one-eighth of the sedan’s actual starting price. In no time, people looking to buy a car spotted the ad and rushed to the dealer for what they thought was a steal, Bloomberg reported.
After hundreds of aspiring buyers made their bookings and paid 911 yuan in advance, Porsche revealed that there was “a serious mistake in the listed retail price.” By then, the German manufacturer had already taken down the online ad. But what followed was trolling of the carmaker on Chinese’s social media platform Weibo.
The dealer in China had contacted the first customer who had paid the advance for the Panamera and “negotiated an agreeable outcome”, Porsche said, without sharing the specifics.
It added that the company has apologised to all the others who made the bookings and paid the advance, promising a refund within 48 hours.
Porsche had sales worth $6.2 billion in China in the first half of 2022 alone, selling 46,664 vehicles in that period, Bloomberg reported. This marked 30 per cent of the premium car brand’s global sales.
