Porsche has been drawn into a $300mn lawsuit with a leading US luxury car dealer as the German carmaker struggles to readjust its pricing strategy following aggressive increases in the wake of the pandemic.
The lawsuit, originally filed in 2022 by Florida dealership The Collection, alleged that Porsche in North America resorted to “strong-arm” tactics and withheld allocation of cars after it refused to build a standalone Porsche showroom.
German parent group Porsche AG had tried several times to recuse itself from the case as a foreign entity but a Miami judge recently dismissed its request, setting the stage for a trial next March shortly after former McLaren boss Michael Leiters is set to take over as its new chief executive.
Porsche and its two subsidiaries have denied allegations that their conduct violated Florida’s dealer franchise law and pushed The Collection’s sales into “a death spiral” as the dealer has claimed in its filing to the Florida court.
But the lawsuit in one of the hottest locations for luxury brands in America has shed an uncomfortable spotlight on Porsche’s relationship with powerful US dealers. It comes at a time when the German carmaker contends with weak vehicle sales across its core markets and a costly reversal of its ambitious EV policy.
“This litigation is about the relations between dealers, their distributors and manufacturers certainly throughout the state of Florida but because much of America has similar regulations at issue, the litigation implicates the industry throughout the country,” said Sean Burstyn, founder of Burstyn Law in Miami, who represents The Collection.
Three years ago when The Collection sued Porsche’s subsidiaries for $300mn in damages, the luxury car landscape was vastly different.
Coming out of the Covid-19 chip shortage, Porsche, like its rivals, was able to raise its prices aggressively since its vehicles were often pre-sold before dealers received them owing to pent-up demand for scarce units.
In a trend that some buyers had dubbed “the Ferrarification of Porsche”, the German carmaker tried to become a super luxury brand like Ferrari by pushing up its prices.
“Porsche, coming out of Covid, pushed pricing really, really hard and they just kept driving the price up on everything,” said Scott Sherwood, an independent analyst of luxury car brands. “If you’re looking to create loyalty and repeat customers, that’s not how you do it.”
The price increases were also accelerated by a lack of pricing discipline among its dealers. Unlike Ferrari, whose dealers are incentivised to sell at the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, Porsche’s distributors had more freedom to sell some of its vehicles at far above the carmaker’s recommended price. This in turn meant that there was a wide variation in retail prices across dealerships.
In its complaint, The Collection said that by May 2022, Porsche gave “considerable attention” to dealers charging well in excess of the suggested price for its vehicles.
In recent years, Porsche sought to extend its influence over the US sales network, encouraging dealers to create exclusive showrooms for its brand, according to analysts.
The Collection, which also represents other brands such as Ferrari, McLaren and Aston Martin, was asked to invest tens of millions of dollars to build facilities selling only Porsche vehicles — a move meant to bolster the luxury experience for customers.
A top dealer for Porsche vehicles in the US for several decades, The Collection accused the German carmaker of withholding the cars after it refused to build the facility, claiming that such tactics may have been used to “nix” dealers so it could sell directly to consumers.
In its defence filing this month, Porsche denied the allegations and argued that The Collection had been suffering from falling sales for almost a decade.
The dealer would not have suffered any lost profits if it had “timely built a compliant Porsche dealership facility”, it said, adding that “The Collection intentionally decided not to invest in a new exclusive Porsche facility, despite experiencing declining sales of new Porsche-brand vehicles for nearly a decade”.
Porsche Cars North America declined to comment on the pending trial. Regarding its pricing strategy, it said all of its 204 franchised dealers in the US were independently owned and operated.
It added that Porsche had ranked at the top in terms of sales satisfaction and customer loyalty in 2025 surveys conducted in the US by JD Power, a consumer analytics company.
Conflicts between manufacturers and dealers in the US market were “inevitable”, said Arthur Kipferler of Berylls by AlixPartners. Demands from brands were likely to run up against resistance from dealers, who have an interest in protecting their own bottom line, he said.
The greenlight for the trial comes as analysts are increasingly critical of Porsche’s efforts to emulate Ferrari’s pricing. While the Italian carmaker thrives by controlling vehicle volumes — totalling just 14,000 a year — to create scarcity and pricing power, Porsche with its annual sales of over 310,000 did not have the same kind of exclusivity.
The company is also under intense pressure to boost sales as it invested heavily to develop new electric cars, while it halted production of petrol or hybrid successors for its best-selling Macan and Cayman models — a decision that has now backfired and cost Porsche billions of euros to reverse.
With vehicle sales in the first nine months of the year down by 6 per cent in North America alongside a 25 per cent fall in China and 16 per cent decline in Germany, Porsche needs its US dealers more than ever.
Local dealers in the US were “indispensable” for Porsche to support its sales performance, “especially in a period of slowing demand”, said Stefan Reindl, director of the Institute of Automotive Industry in Germany.
As Leiters seeks to turn Porsche’s fortunes around, the incoming CEO cannot afford to be further entangled in a high-profile lawsuit in Florida, warned analysts.
The litigation would be an additional challenge to the complexities already created by Donald Trump’s higher tariffs on foreign-made cars. The company has raised the prices of new models across all regions and it has indicated to investors of additional price increases in the coming months.
“When Leiters comes in, if he’s smart, he’ll get this resolved quickly and then move on,” Sherwood said.
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