In the United States, the Macan era began in May 2014.

Cayenne sales plunged, not just on a year-over-year basis – they were down 27% from 1765 in May 2013 to 1294 – but in comparison with prior months. After averaging 1558 monthly Cayenne sales over the twelve months through April 2013, May volume fell 17% below that figure.


But it's hardly cannibalization if you only eat one appendage. (Or is it? I'm not up to speed on cannibal etiquette or the modern cannibal's vernacular.) Porsche utility vehicle volume shot up 45% compared with May 2013 thanks to an additional 1263 Macan sales. The Macan was Porsche's second-best-selling model and only trailed the Cayenne by 31 units.

Nor is the small bite out of the Cayenne's typical output cause for concern, not with Porsche beginning the Macan's tenure free from truly entry-level variants. (The current base Macan, the S, has a base price that's $300 in excess of the Cayenne's, albeit $16,900 below the Cayenne S's base price.)


With 2557 sales between them, Porsche's two SUVs, or crossovers, or CUVs, or utility vehicles, or light trucks, or whatever you wanted to call them yesterday before changing your mind today, accounted for 55.5% of Porsche U.S. sales. This GCBC tracking page shows total Porsche brand U.S. sales for every month back through 2010 and every year back until 2002.


The Macan, reviewed on Jalopnik back in February, outsold the Boxster, Cayman, and Panamera combined. The Cayenne sold 50% more often than the 911, sales of which were down just slightly in May and through the first five months of 2014. May and year-to-date sales results for all Porsches, and all other vehicles for that matter, are visible in a sortable list that GCBC publishes each month.


At its typical sales levels, the Cayenne is popular enough that you see them rather frequently, but not so common that they're not exclusive. BMW sold more than three times as many X5s in May as Porsche sold Cayennes, for example.

The Panamera remains rare in comparison to cars like the Mercedes-Benz S-Class: 4.7 times more popular than the Panamera in May.


By the standards of high-end sports cars, the 911 is obscenely popular, but obviously rarer than the vast majority of new vehicles.


The Boxster and Cayman have combined to outsell the TT, Z4, and F-Type combined so far this year, but even they don't sell nearly as often as they did a decade (or less) ago.

This is no criticism of Porsche, a company that's long since learned how to make a whole lot of money by building and selling a small number of automobiles. But the Macan, besides making Porsche an SUV-builder that just so happens to build the odd sports car on the side, shoves Porsche into another bracket.


Porsche outsold Land Rover by a small margin in May, trailed Volvo by only 405 units, and ended the month just 162 sales back of Fiat, as you'll see in this list of brand results. Fiat, Volvo, and Land Rover aren't high-volume auto brands, not by any means. But they're not the smallest of niche-fillers, either. Jaguar sold just 1304 vehicles in May 2014, finishing the month only 160 sales ahead of Maserati.