Porsche boss Wendelin Wiedeking said the carmaker looked to make savings via a €100-million cost-cutting programme and would shut down its main plant near Stuttgart for an extra 19 days prior to its normal summer break.
“We won’t pump the market full of vehicles for which there’s no demand,” Wiedeking said. “We always produce one car less than the market requires.”
The production stop will mean Porsche will shutter its main factory for a total of 30 days during the current downturn. The carmaker already shut down the plant for 11 days in December and January.
But unlike other German auto industry giants, Wiedeking said cutting workers' hours was not currently under discussion at Porsche.
German carmakers have been slammed by the global economic downturn and Porsche said Friday that sales in the second half of 2008 plunged 27 percent to 34,000 vehicles. Revenues fell by 14 percent over the same period to around €3 billion.
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