Porsche expands online sales to eight more countries

Porsche has expanded its online sales offering to a further eight European countries, with the UK to follow shortly.

Germany has had the facility since October 2019, and now Estonia, France, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Switzerland have joined the scheme.

At this stage, there's no firm date on when it will be introduced to the UK.

Pre-launch analysis has revealed how lucrative online sales could be. In Italy, 40% of online customers are new to Porsche, with a particular focus on used cars. Some 90% of the cars sold on the platform so far were pre-owned.

Other markets are also looking into the strategy. China offers used car searches via WeChat and lifestyle products through Tmall, a large online marketplace.

In the long term, the aim is to create an area where customers can buy everything to do with Porsche, from new and used cars to more specialist and rare derivatives.

Porsche joins a growing list of manufacturers looking to the internet to bolster car sales. Polestar recently opened its first UK Space, where you can view but not actually buy a car, while sibling brand Volvo now offers a subscription service.

Not that any of this means Porsche is scaling back bricks-and-mortar dealers: here in the UK, a satellite centre in York will open in autumn 2021. Designed to offer a smaller, more localised sales and service centre to the main Leeds hub, it will also feature six charging stations for the increasing number of electric cars that Porsche is due to launch in the coming years.