Ten years after the production began at Porsche’s Leipzig plant with a Cayenne in 2002, the half a millionth vehicle rolls off the production line – and it’s a Cayenne. It is quite a special Cayenne though, a white V8 powered S model converted into a command vehicle for the Leipzig fire brigade. The keys were handed over to the Lord Mayor of the city by Porsche CEO Matthias Muller.

Porsche and Leipzig are working great with each other. The city hosts one of the company’s biggest production facilities, and the car maker helps with the development of the city. Because of Porsche’s factory Leipzig is now a world famous city. The remarkable milestone that is producing 500,000 cars in ten years is a giant feather in both parties’ caps.

Having reached new heights in production volume, Porsche is now thinning about expansion, and developing the production facility into a fully-fledged plant with its own body assembly line and paint shop, investing more than 500 million euro and creating approximately 1,000 additional jobs in the medium term.

“Half a million vehicles in only ten years is a remarkable result for a luxury car manufacturer like Porsche. Behind the success is a strong workforce now numbering 1,005 employees at our production facility in Saxony. I am impressed by the high degree of technical expertise of our Leipzig colleagues. They send forth into the world the seal of quality ‘Made in Germany’ and with it a piece of Leipzig,” said M?ller in his speech to high-ranking guests.

In his speech, Leipzig’s Lord Mayor Burkhard Jung emphasised the importance to the city’s development of Porsche having set up shop there: “500,000 Porsches made in Leipzig is powerful evidence of Porsche’s ability as a company to perform in the industrial location that is Leipzig. The world’s most prestigious sports car manu-facturer has put its faith in this city and written a success story. I look forward to the new, even larger Porsche plant.”