Michael Satterfield
In the mid-1990’s Indonesia was seeing an economic renaissance with 5 to 7 percent annual economic growth, a stable pro-business government, and a population of over 200 million, global companies were hoping to tap into this emerging market in a big way. General Motors opened a plant just outside of Jakarta in 1994, Exxon partnered with the state-owned oil company Pertamina, McDonald’s and KFC restaurants were popping up across major cities, even Amway had launched an enterprise in Indonesia.
So it was no surprise that German carmaker Porsche wanted to get in on the action and began making plans to tool up to build their iconic 911 with Indonesian partner ATPM Indomobil. At the time Indomobil was already manufacturing and distributing Mazda and Suzuki cars and light trucks, but the Executive Director of Indomobil, Marvy Apandi, also owned his own car company… a kit car manufacturer that built a number of cars”inspired” by cars like the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, Jaguar SS100, and the Shelby Cobra. Saying they were replicas would be far too kind as the vehicles shared very little with the cars they were trying to emulate.
In 1996 Apandi had his team pull fiberglass molds directly from the current model 911 that Indomobil was under contract to produce in partnership with Porsche and began distributing the Marvia 911 via Indomobil Suzuki dealerships throughout the country. The Marvia 911 was based on the Mazda MR90, with a 1.4-liter engine, and a front-engine/front-wheel-drive layout. Other cars were assembled using Mercedes engines and modified chassis with a front-engine/rear-wheel-drive layout. While it wasn’t going to be as fast as a real 911, it really did look the part, considering the parts were made with access to original Porsche tooling and panels.
Porsche was understandably less than pleased that their partner was selling 911 kit cars before they had even had a chance to launch their factory program. Porsche withdrew from their agreement with Indomobil which had already begun installing Porsche signage at dealerships. It is unclear what happened with the litigation as within a year Indonesia would be plunged into an economic and social crisis.
The Marvia factory (if you could call it that) burned down in the May Riots of 1998 having just made around 50 of their “Porsches.” From what I can find the company never reopened. Porsche did eventually enter the Indonesian market in the mid-2000s with PT Eurokars Artha Utama who also distributes Rolls-Royce, BMW, Maserati, and Mazda.
