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    Michael Leiters saved Porsche once – can he do it again?

    2 weeks ago

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    ► Analysis: is Michael Leiters right for Porsche?► Led McLaren through a tough time…► …can he do it again with Stuttgart? In 2023 – the last financial year for which McLaren published full figures – it somehow managed to lose £872 million on the sale of just 2137 cars. That is more than £400,000 per car, and more in a single year than was invested in McLaren’s creation 15 years before. You’d think that whoever presided over this would struggle to find work in the car industry again. Yet on 1 January 2026, Michael Leiters started work back at Porsche: not washing cars or serving wurst in the canteen, but as the new chief executive. Contrary to what those stark figures suggest, Porsche is lucky to have Leiters, for three reasons. The first is that the problems at McLaren were not of his making, and as CEO for the past three years he steered it intact through the most difficult period in its short life and into new ownership. He might even have saved it. That loss in 2023 is an unfair figure to quote as it includes an impairment charge of £375m related to Leiters’ bold (and correct) decision to delay the Artura and get it right, and that low sales figure is skewed by the fact that McLaren only had the Artura and GT to sell in 2023. The 765LT, 720S and Elva all ceased production early that year, and the 750S only went on sale as it ended. By the third quarter of 2024, the last for which we have figures, things were starting to come right. Turnover had almost doubled, year-to-date losses had shrunk to £85m and sales looked likely to finish at over 3000 for the year. The figures stop because McLaren was bought by CYVN, a division of the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, and merged with Forseven, the luxury hybrid and EV maker CYVN had founded three years previously. Forseven’s 700 engineers had been developing a range of cars in stealth mode from its base in the Midlands. Those cars will now be sold as McLarens, so it would have been odd if Leiters had been kept on to bring them to market. There’s no question that Leiters makes great product: the Artura and 750S are among McLaren’s best cars, and the W1 might be its best ever; we’ll find out soon. But this was essentially a reverse-takeover by Forseven, so its CEO Nick Collins, formerly the product boss at JLR, got the top job when the two were merged under the McLaren brand, as we reported in Agenda in September. Collins wasn’t entirely positive about the line-up he inherited, but Leiters’ departure was more to do with circumstance than performance (and he may already have been in talks about the Porsche gig anyway). The second reason Porsche is lucky to have Leiters is that it’s possible to view his entire career as being a long preparation for this. The German engineer first joined Porsche in 2000 and spent 13 years there, mostly when it was in its imperial phase under Wendelin Wiedeking and making enough money to attempt to take control of Volkswagen. He led the development of the Cayenne hybrid and then managed that entire product line: the model that put Porsche’s volume and profits on steroids. He then went to Ferrari as CTO for eight years, where he successfully introduced new body types and hybrid power to an even more demanding audience with the Purosangue, SF90 and 296. Then McLaren gave him three years’ practice as CEO of a sports car maker in a tough spot: experience directly relevant to what he now faces at Porsche. He wasn’t there long enough to be the CEO who introduced a McLaren SUV. Instead he was overtaken by events, and found himself available when Porsche came calling. It’s almost like Porsche planned the whole thing: raised him, sent him out into the big wide world to learn, then called him back when it needed him. The third and final reason why Porsche is lucky to have Leiters is that good CEOs willing to helm car makers are in short supply. It took Stellantis six months to find a replacement for Carlos Tavares, and Renault’s brilliant Luca de Meo – who could have had the Stellantis job or almost any other senior role in the industry – quit for Kering, the luxury goods maker. It’s a horrible time to run a car maker, and Porsche faces the same problems as almost every other Western car manufacturer: slumping sales in China, the uncertainty and cost of tariffs, and a deadline to drop combustion engines despite falling demand for EVs. Who’d want to be a car boss now? And how bad are things at Porsche? It just made its first quarterly loss since its IPO (initial public offering) in 2022, losing nearly €1bn in three months after a profit of the same amount in the same quarter the previous year. Profits as of late 2025 are a scant €40m, by comparison with €4bn at the same point the previous year. The share price has plunged from a peak of €120 to around €45. What was once Europe’s most valuable car company and its largest-ever IPO has just dropped out of the DAX index of Germany’s 40 largest companies. Global sales are down six per cent, but in China by 26 per cent. Around 3900 workers will lose their jobs. Porsche’s plan to get out of this mess has already been decided, before Leiters starts the new job. Like most O other manufacturers it’s going to continue developing combustion, hybrid and electric powertrains concurrently until customers and legislators decide what they want: a very expensive business. The new three-row K1 SUV will get combustion and plug-in hybrid powertrains rather than being purely EV as originally planned, but has been postponed from 2027 to the early ’30s. It would have been Porsche’s first car on the Volkswagen Group’s SSP electric platform, and might still be. The new 718 won’t be purely EV any more, instead gaining petrol-powered halo versions. A Macan-sized petrol SUV will return, and the Cayenne and Panamera will also continue to offer petrol and hybrid power for the foreseeable. Porsche will take a €3.1bn hit for these changes, but more cost is likely to follow. So Leiters won’t carry the can for the plan, but he does take responsibility for an awful lot of execution as Porsche revises its powertrain plans for every model bar the 911. Ironically, the guy responsible for introducing hybrid power to the Cayenne in 2014 is now charged with reintroducing non-electrified power to four models. Every one of the new variants needs to be done quickly, but to Porsche standards.And that plan may well be adjusted again: those new petrol and hybrid variants are being planned despite the EU’s 2035 ban on their sale remaining in place. But it’s the subject of intense lobbying and likely to change, as will customer sentiment and demand for EVs. Leiters might also want to change the plan when he gets his feet under the desk vacated by Oliver Blume, who has been CEO of Porsche for a decade. Trouble is, Blume remains his boss, as CEO of the Volkswagen Group, which owns just over 75 per cent of Porsche. Blume’s attachment to Porsche caused him to retain both CEO jobs for three years, long after everyone from investors to union leaders started calling on him publicly to quit the Porsche job and focus on the even bigger problems at the wider VW Group. Blume now has, finally, done what they asked and the share prices of both firms flicked upwards a little when he did. But he’s unlikely to leave Porsche entirely alone, even if the other brands within the family – from mass-market Seat, Skoda and VW, via Audi and Cupra to upmarket Bentley, Ducati and Lamborghini – also have challenges to face. And how much influence does either CEO really have when the Porsche and Piëch families control both companies? Plunging profits and share prices at their two prize assets have put them in an unaccustomed squeeze. Porsche is the easier to put right. If Leiters doesn’t get it back to profit soon, he might be looking for another new job. On the other hand, if he can generate some proper cash for the clan in a weird, tough market, he might be looking at taking Blume’s job again. Ben is one of the most respected voices in the motoring space and writes for a number of titles in the UK and at leading automotive publications around the world. By Ben Oliver Contributing editor, watch connoisseur, purveyor of fine features
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