Porsche Dealer Mistakenly Lists New $148,000 Panamera for $18,000

Image: Porsche

If you look hard enough, you can find used Porsche Panameras for under $20,000. Sure, they’ll have a ton of miles and more than likely some mechanical issues. But you’ll be driving a Panamera! You’ll never see a new one for that cheap. Some people though thought they had stumbled on the holy grail of new car deals, though: A brand-new Panamera listed on a Chinese dealership’s website for a mere $18,000, per Bloomberg.

The Porsche dealer that made the mistake is in a city called Yinchuan. The dealer listed a brand new Panamera on its website for 124,000 yuan, or about $18,000 — one-eighth the actual price of the car. Hundreds of people saw the listing and quickly plunked down deposits of 911 yuan ($135) for the vehicle. I mean, who wouldn’t? Only after hundreds of deposits started coming in did the dealer realize the mistake.

Both Porsche and the dealer had to backtrack everything, first with an apology posted on the social media platform Weibo. The dealer then took down the ad.

In what had to be a maddening situation for customers and the company alike, Porsche had to reach out to every single person that had put down a deposit and tell them that no, actually, the car isn’t that cheap, and to give them a refund.

While you might think that some would get annoyed in a situation like this, it wasn’t all bad news. The first person who put down one of the deposits was so understanding of the situation that they came to a negotiated “agreeable outcome” with the dealer that Porsche didn’t elaborate on. Sounds like that person may have actually bought a Panamera. Just goes to show that bad press doesn’t always have a bad ending.