The newly opened Porsche Studio near the historic Bugis district in the heart of Singapore has hardly anything in common with a car dealership as we know it. On the ground floor of the modern glass building in Guoco Midtown there is a silver-colored Porsche 356 next to a café bar, diagonally opposite there is a clothing area, while a modern, industrial-chic staircase leads up in the middle.
Here the counter of the Carrera Café is even more impressive. A few meters further, a warmly designed seating area with a wall of books invites you to linger or work. A blue Porsche Cayenne is parked opposite and right next to it you can put together your dream Porsche using samples of paint and leather. This is car buying that visionary sales and marketing departments otherwise only dream of in endless Power Point presentations. This is lived in Singapore.
Exclusive locations for well-heeled customers
Matthias Becker, responsible for the overseas region at Porsche: “Singapore is the perfect location for this expanded Porsche Studio. With this innovative, new format, we want to test further ideas and possibilities for interaction with our customers and fans while at the same time offering an unforgettable experience. that goes beyond just selling a car.”
Anyone who enters Singapore takes the leap into the future after stepping off the plane. Entering one of the countless computer counters takes just 30 seconds – that’s it. Endlessly long queues are frowned upon here, as is uncleanliness. When it comes to networking, the metropolis of six million is further ahead than almost all other industrialized nations.
For example, since the 1980s, vehicles have been equipped with a transmitter behind the windshield that charges the city toll as well as parking garages or tunnel passages. Billing comes automatically once a month. Paying by cash? Even on the colorful hawker markets, this is rather the exception.
The car market is strictly regulated and firmly in Asian-European hands. The general public travels with volume models from Toyota, Honda or Hyundai. However, anyone who is self-respecting will be driven and sit in the back of a luxury limousine from Germany. Simply buying a car and driving off in Singapore is not only expensive, but also extremely complicated. The license plates are awarded in a permanent lottery.
100,000 euros just for registration – without a car
Andre Brand, General Manager of Porsche Singapore: “At the end of last year, the ten-year COE (Certificate of Entitlement) cost up to 160,000 Singapore dollars; currently it is around 112,000 US dollars, which is added to the price of a new vehicle. The Cars themselves are therefore almost unaffordable by Western standards. Punitive import taxes ensure that a simple BMW starts at 635,000 SGD – almost 430,000 euros. This is no different with models like the Mercedes E-Class or a Porsche Macan. The package price for purchase and registration is no lower than 300,000 euros. Exclusive sports cars sometimes cost millions.”
Nevertheless, BMW alone sells up to 16,000 vehicles per year in the small Singapore market. The city-state is the country with the second-fastest growth in the world in terms of UHNWI – the “ultra-high-net-worth individuals” with investable assets of over 30 million US dollars, which are so hotly contested in Asia.
It’s no surprise that luxury models perform particularly well. This is despite the fact that the punitive taxes for vehicles with a purchase price of over SGD 80,000 were recently increased from 220 to 320 percent. Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong noted in a recent budget speech that there was “room to inject more progressiveness into car taxes, to better differentiate between high-end cars and mass-market models, and also to tax luxury cars at a higher rate.” .
“Oh Lord Won’t You Buy Me A Mercedes Benz”
That doesn’t dampen demand: the Mercedes G-Class alone was able to increase sales by more than 240 percent between 2021 and 2023. Porsche is therefore not the only premium manufacturer to create a new, particularly image-rich sales experience with its exclusive studio. At the same time as the local premiere of the E-Class, Mercedes opened its completely renovated Brand Center in January.
As a premium brand, Mercedes is in second place in the sales statistics with a sales share of 17 percent in 2022 behind Toyota (20.2 percent). With 12.0 percent, BMW placed ahead of volume manufacturers such as Honda, Hyundai and Mazda. Electromobility is only slowly gaining momentum in Singapore. The government wants to ban combustion vehicles as new models by 2024 and currently only models with the strict Euro 6 emissions standard can be approved.
The number of electric cars among new registrations was over 16 percent in 2022 – an increase of more than four percent compared to 2022. Buyers of an electric model receive tax savings of up to 40,000 Singapore dollars per vehicle for new registrations. The charging network, however, remains expandable. CDG Engie currently operates around 500 charging points in Singapore; The provider Charge Plus wants to multiply the number of currently around 1,000 plugs to 30,000 by the end of the decade. Total Energies currently has the widest network with 1,500 plugs. Singapore wants to offer 60,000 charging stations by 2030; 40,000 of them in public spaces.
Until that happens, sports car fans like to treat themselves to trips to neighboring Malaysia in their roaring cars, especially on weekends. “We meet at 5:30 or 6 a.m. across the border and then go on tours that we offer to our fans as a program like Cars & Coffee,” says Porsche manager Andre Brand, showing that many customers are also looking for something beyond the car itself . No wonder at these prices.