Porsche Bridges Former Communist Divide as Macan Plugs Gap: Cars

On a newly constructed bridge at Porsche AG’s growing factory in eastern Germany, a worker put up a handmade sign this summer with a tongue-in-cheek notice saying “Access to the West,” echoing Cold War language that once marked the former-communist region’s borders.

For employees at the facility in Leipzig, a city where protests helped lead to German reunification 23 years ago today, the joke was obvious. With some of the most elite cars in the world rolling off lines there and a nearby Bayerische Motoren Werke AG factory, the West has arrived.