The head of Porsche has described the last financial year as the best in the marque's history.

At the annual shareholders meeting in Stuttgart today, Dr Wendelin Wiedeking said: "The struggle for market share has become a lot tougher particularly in the sports car segment. But while volume manufacturers often write their sports car accounts in red figures, Porsche now looks better than ever before in our more than 50 years of corporate history.

"Both sales and profits have reached new record levels for the company."

Group turnover increased by 15.4% to 7.134 billion DM (£2.32b) and despite increased development expenditure for the forthcoming third model line (Porsche Cayenne), the pre-tax result was boosted to 845.5m DM (£276.4m), 21.5% above the previous year's figure, 698.2m DM (£227.4m).

A total of 48,797 Porsche cars were delivered to the dealer organisation worldwide, 10.9% more than in the previous fiscal year. In the UK last year Porsche ended 2000 with market share up 9.5% to 0.19 and 4,059 registrations (1999: 3,707).