Porsche Tracks Down Counterfeiters In Rural China Making Fake Products

A very high percentage of all Porsches ever built is still in operation and that's due not only to the high build quality standards of the brand but also thanks to service and maintenance with genuine spare parts. But even if a product you are going to use wears the Porsche name or logo, that doesn't necessarily mean it's an original Porsche part or component. To protect you from buying fake parts, accessories, and products, Porsche has a special division that tracks counterfeiters responsible for the production of these unoriginal goods.

Three brand protection agents work for the company at its factory in Zuffenhausen and their main responsibility is to track down fake Porsche parts around the globe and take them out of circulation. In 2018 alone, the team confiscated more than 200,000 items, including 33,000 spare parts, estimated at about €60 million, or more than $67 million at the current exchange rates. Almost all of these counterfeits are offered on online platforms like Ebay, Amazon, and Alibaba, which makes it difficult to track down the companies selling them.

"Sometimes the counterfeits are quite obvious," Porsche lawyer Michaela Stoiber explains. "The products are far cheaper than normal, or the Porsche emblem has been poorly copied. We sometimes also find that a different animal is shown in the center of the logo. For example, instead of the Porsche horse, it could be a sheep standing on its hind legs."

Porsche estimates that roughly 80 percent of the fake parts and accessories come from China, more specifically from the country's rural areas. There, the goods are manufactured at small workshops or even "in a backyard or in the family's living room." Interestingly, the German manufacturer says, many factories work to the standards of the professional Porsche plants building components with comparable quality.