Porsche's sales tumble by 27.3 percent

Porsche is world-renowned for making some pretty fast vehicles, but even the German sports car maker wasn't fast enough to outrun the global economic slowdown. The first six months of Porsche's fiscal year are in the books and things are not looking good.

Porsche announced on Friday that its revenue decreased by 14.3 percent during the August to January period, totaling roughly three billion euros. Not surprisingly, Porsche's sales are also down, slipping 27.3 percent to about 34,000 units.

Porsche noted that sales of its volume Boxster were down during the first half of its fiscal year, largely due to a new model set to launch next month. The German automaker expects sales to pick back up once the new model hits a number of global markets.

Porsche's Cayenne saw about a 20 percent drop in global demand, but still managed a rather healthy 16,600 - not bad considering the trend away from large SUVs.

Here in North America, Porsche's sales dropped from 16,200 dales during the same period last year to 11,850 units this year.