Porsche’s worst sales decline in 16 years is not an aberration—it is a symptom. In 2025, the German sports car maker delivered 279,449 vehicles, a 10% drop that exposes the fragility of a luxury automotive model increasingly detached from economic reality.

Like its German peers Audi and Mercedes-Benz, Porsche is colliding with weakening demand, most sharply in China, where once-reliable growth has evaporated amid fierce domestic competition. In Europe, the decline was compounded by regulatory disruption.

New EU cybersecurity rules forced Porsche to withdraw combustion-engine versions of key models, including the best-selling Macan, revealing how tightly modern carmakers are bound to regulatory compliance, software dependency, and fragile supply chains.

The result was an inflated 2024 baseline followed by an inevitable collapse. North America offered little more than temporary insulation. Porsche’s flat U.S. sales—outperforming rivals only by declining less—were buoyed by inventory pulled forward to outrun looming tariffs.

But without U.S. manufacturing, Porsche remains exposed to trade policy decisions that could cost the company an estimated €700 million, underscoring how globalised production has become a liability rather than a strength.

The company points to electrification as progress: 22.2% of deliveries were fully electric and 12.1% plug-in hybrid.

Yet this transition, hailed in press releases, does little to address the deeper crisis—vehicles growing ever more expensive, markets shrinking, and an industry propped up by financial engineering rather than genuine demand.

Porsche’s decline is not merely about sales figures. It is about an industry that has priced itself beyond reach, tethered itself to unstable global systems, and now finds that prestige offers no protection from economic gravity.