Tough Times in the Car Business? Pshaw.

As the United Automobile Workers fight tooth and nail for health care coverage and pension payouts, news from Porsche is likely to rub salt in the wound.

The Stuttgart-based carmaker said Friday that 8,000 Porsche workers will receive a 5,200-euro ($7,350) bonus this year, thanks to worldwide sales increases and profits that are expected to surpass those for 2006.

The company said sales rose 3.4 percent to $10.5 billion for the fiscal year ending July 31, led by the 911 model (above).

To add insult to injury for the put-upon U.A.W., Porsche has partly the U.S. market to thank for its exceptional success this year. Mostly recently, Porsche announced it had beaten last year's September sales figures by 20 percent with 2,801 customer deliveries this past month.

Did somebody say something about a liquidity crunch? Because Porsche is just one of many luxury imports making hay in the U.S. right now.

B.M.W.'s U.S. sales for September rose 12.1 percent from the same time last year, with U.S. sales for 2007 overall up 8 percent so far—although, of course, it comes atop a tiny base compared with annual North American sales at G.M.

The 13 percent U.S. sales growth Mercedes saw in September was a bigger gain than in any of the carmaker's other major markets during the period.

And it's not just the Germans invading the American market. Britain-based Land Rover is on track for a record year in 2007, after its U.S. sales gained 21 percent in September from the same period last year.

Perhaps all those beleaguered hedge fund managers and uneasy private equity chiefs have been doing a little "retail therapy" to soothe their market jitters.

by Liz Gunnison

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