Porsche’s Opening Its Next Experience Center At Hockenheim

Picking up a new Porsche? Want to learn how to get the most out of yours? Head to your nearest Porsche Experience Center. Like the new one the automaker is opening at the Hockenheimring in Germany.

Run by the manufacturer (not by dealers), Porsche Experience Centers serve as delivery hubs, driving schools, and pantheons to everything Porsche. The company already has six around the world: in Atlanta and Los Angeles, at Silverstone and Le Mans, in Shanghai, and at the factory in Leipzig. The Hockenheim location will be its seventh (and the second in Germany).

The new facility will take up some 176,000 square-meters at the heart of the circuit. It will include a three-story building, a handling course, driving dynamics areas, and even an off-road course for Macans and Cayennes. It will also have rapid chargers for plug-in hybrids and the forthcoming Mission E electric vehicles. There’ll be a gift shop of course, a restaurant, a showroom, and conference center.

“The Porsche Experience Centres allow our customers and fans to experience the performance of our vehicles as well as the fascination of the brand at first hand,” said Porsche sales/marketing chief Detlev von Platen. “We are extending this unique offering by constructing this new site near our main plant in Zuffenhausen.”

Close To Home

One of two traditional homes of the German Grand Prix (alongside the Nürburgring), Hockenheim is an hour and a half away from Porsche’s headquarters in Stuttgart. The satellite Leipzig plant has its own on-site Experience Center. The Silverstone, Le Mans, Shanghai, and new Hockenheim locations share their premises with existing world-class circuits. And the two facilities in the US were custom built for the purpose (the Altanta center located on the grounds of to the company’s US headquarters).

“The Porsche Experience Centre in Hockenheim will become an important site for our home market of Germany,” said Jens Puttfarcken, head of Porsche’s home market. “Even in the age of digitalisation, live experiences with the Porsche brand are just as important as ever.”

Construction is set to commence on the Hockenheim facility in the coming months. It’s anticipated to open sometime towards the end of 2019.