Porsche's millionth car in China arrives as its sales there fall 32%
A million Porsches in 25 years, and the millionth lands as China buys fewer than Germany
Porsche has handed over its one millionth new car in mainland China, a 911 GT3 Touring, at the Porsche Experience Centre Shanghai on 13 September. The count started with a single Beijing dealership in 2001. It closes in a year when the market that was Porsche's largest from 2015, and that peaked at 95,671 cars in 2021, took 14,501 deliveries in the first half of 2026, 437 fewer than Germany.
A 911 GT3 Touring is Porsche's one millionth car in mainland China
Porsche China chief operating officer Philipp von Witzendorff handed over the keys during the Enjoy Supercar Day at the Porsche Experience Centre Shanghai, the local leg of a Sportscar Together Day weekend that drew about 14,000 people to ten Porsche Experience Centres worldwide. In Shanghai, more than 1,200 owners and over 400 cars turned up. The GT3 Touring carries the 4.0-litre naturally aspirated flat-six with 510 hp and 450 Nm, reaches 100 km/h in 3.4 seconds with the PDK gearbox, tops out at 311 km/h and swaps the fixed wing for a retractable spoiler. It lists in China from 2.268 million yuan. Porsche China was founded in 2001, the year the first dealership opened in Beijing.
China peaked at 95,671 Porsches in 2021 and fell to 41,938 by 2025
Porsche's China count rose every year from 46,931 in 2014 to 95,671 in 2021, and by 2015 the country had become the brand's largest single market. It then fell four years running: 93,286 in 2022, 79,283 in 2023, 56,887 in 2024 and 41,938 in 2025, a 26 percent drop Porsche blamed on the luxury segment and on competition for electric models. The first half of 2026 took another 32 percent off, to 14,501, against 14,938 in Germany. At the 2021 rate the second million would have taken about ten and a half years. At the pace of the first half of 2026, it takes 34.
Porsche is cutting China to 80 dealers and has switched off 200 chargers
The network is shrinking faster than the sales line. Porsche had around 150 sales outlets in China in 2024 and 114 at the end of 2025, and Alexander Pollich, chief executive of Porsche China, said in January that the plan is about 80 in 2026. Porsche's own Chinese charging network, about 200 stations, began closing on 1 March 2026. Pollich has ruled out building cars in China or developing China-only electric models, and Porsche calls its approach value-oriented sales, which means holding price and accepting lower volume. The segment contracted too: China Passenger Car Association data put luxury-brand sales at about 2.2 million cars in the first eleven months of 2025, down 10.6 percent, and above 700,000 yuan the Huawei-backed Maextro S800 outsold the Panamera, BMW 7 Series and Mercedes-Maybach S-Class combined in December 2025.
The 911 grew 19% in the half-year when every other Porsche line fell
The choice of a 911 for the milestone matches the one line still growing. Porsche delivered 30,534 911s worldwide in the first half of 2026, up 19 percent, while the Cayenne fell 9 percent, the Macan 22 percent, the Taycan 25 percent and the Panamera 38 percent. The GT3 Touring is a wing-deleted 911 offered with a manual gearbox, delivered in a market that built its Porsche volume on the Cayenne and Macan. In September 2025 Porsche rewrote its product plan to add combustion and plug-in hybrid models and delay some EVs, a shift that brings back a petrol Macan. For China in 2026 it has scheduled the Cayenne Electric, shown in Beijing in April, the electric 718 and a new combustion-and-hybrid SUV positioned below the Macan.
Handelsblatt's 4,100 further job cuts and a €6 billion write-down came the same week
The milestone was announced on 14 September. On 18 September Volkswagen cut its 2026 margin guidance to up to 1 percent on the back of a €6 billion goodwill impairment on Porsche, and on 19 September Handelsblatt reported that files from Volkswagen's supervisory board propose about 4,100 further job cuts at Porsche to close a €700 million overhead gap, on top of the 5,000 agreed in July and the 4,000 before that. Porsche has not confirmed the new number. China sits in both documents as a cause: Porsche's 2025 net profit fell 91 percent to €310 million, and the country that took 31.7 percent of its global deliveries in 2021 took 15 percent in 2025.
AutoNext Take
A millionth car is normally a growth story. Porsche's Chinese one is a retrospective. The first million took 25 years, and most of it was built between 2015 and 2022, when China bought more Porsches than any other country; at the pace of the first half of 2026 the second million lands around 2060. Choosing a GT3 Touring rather than a Cayenne says who Porsche thinks is still in the room: the enthusiast paying 2.268 million yuan for a naturally aspirated flat-six, not the executive who now orders a Maextro S800.
Germany is about to outsell China for Porsche over a full year, for the first time since at least 2014. Germany was 437 cars ahead at the half, and Pollich's 80-dealer target takes 34 more outlets out of the network this year. Porsche publishes its 2026 delivery figures in the second week of January 2027; if China comes in below 30,000, a market that took 95,671 cars five years earlier will have fallen below a third of its peak.
