Porsche has issued an official statement to the press refuting a claim by B&D Forecast that the automaker makes an average of $28,000 on every vehicle it sells. Porsche says the figure was derived by dividing the company's $2.7 billion profit by the 96,794 vehicles it sold in 2005. However, that figure includes one-time income not related to car sales.

"The calculation is misleading because it does not take into account the extensive one-off and extraordinary effects which impacted the pre-tax result of the Porsche Group in the 2005/06 financial year and which have nothing to do with the original Porsche business," the statement reads.

$263 million Euros of the pre-tax result comes from the participation in Volkswagen AG, the company said. Porsche also said it earned several hundred million from "hedging transactions in connection with the VW participation." Porsche also earned over $100 million from sale of CTS Fahrzeug-Dachsysteme. Although Porsche hasn't disclosed exactly what amount of profit comes from its vehicle business, it's safe to assume the automaker earned between $10,000 and $20,000 per car — still an impressive figure.

If you want to see what’s new from Porsche, don’t come to the North American International Auto Show in Detroit next January: According to a report in Automotive News, one of your favorite automakers is pulling out of the Detroit show. Why? Porsche says it wants to focus on shows in regions where it has more customers.

From that standpoint the move makes sense: Porsche says it sold only 290 cars in Michigan last year, compared with 8,827 in California, 4,177 in Florida and 2,172 in New York.

“It was purely a business decision,” says Tony Fouladpour, a spokesman for Porsche Cars North America Inc. “We want to target our marketing resources on more direct customer contact.”

Next year Porsche will be at the Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Miami, Toronto, Dallas, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Washington shows.

Porsche said it needs to more carefully spend its marketing funds, “which are somewhat more limited,” says Fouladpour. “With this reorientation in marketing, we want more customer contact.” In a statement scheduled to be released today, June 11, Porsche says over the past two years it has cut the number of U.S. shows where it exhibits in half.

“We need to look beyond the traditional consumer auto shows, even ones that are highly renowned in the industry,” David Pryor, Porsche’s vice president of marketing, says in the statement.

Rod Alberts, executive director of the Detroit show, says Porsche’s decision was a surprise. Other companies, such as Kia, have pulled out in the past and then returned, he says.

Because space is limited at the Detroit show, automakers that pull out give up the location they have had for years. So if Porsche decides to return, it might end up, as Kia did, in the basement for several years.