Porsche is known for fleecing is customers for extras. Now, they give them away. Porsche sells two special editions of the 911 Carrera and the Boxster, filled with a lot of extras for the price of a base model. Or thereabouts. „A special edition at Porsche is as common as a total eclipse of the sun in Europe,“ writes AutoBild in Germany. Why the sudden generosity?
Both the 911 and the Boxster will be replaced soon by entirely new generations, and remaining inventory of cars and extras has got to go. Enter a favorite Volkswagen sales gimmick for end-of-life cars: Das Sondermodell. A week ago, Porsche announced the 911 „Black Edition.“ Today, AutoBild reports that there will also be a „Black Edition“ Boxster. This one not only delivers a bunch of extras which usually would be extra expensive, it even gets an extra 10 horses. Both cars will be available in black only, of course.
Officially, the Black Edition cars will be launched at the Geneva Motor Show in March and will be available in April. But Porsche is in a hurry to light a fire under the black market: Both Black Editions are already on Porsche’s website. Ah, the special editions will be limited to 987 for the black Boxster (a reference to Porsche’s series number.) Of the Black Porsche 911, there will be 1911 only, apparently, Porsche has them in abundance.
Let the Volkswagenisation of Porsche begin. This is just plain embarrassing for a self-appointed premium sports car maker.
Plus, their customers aren’t dumb. They’ll sure know hat a new 911 is around the corner.
What the hell are you talking about?
For the purpose of clarification: If I were a maker of “premium sports cars”, the last thing I’d do is offer discounted “special editions”. That’s something which (at least over here in Europe) is associated with mass products in the compact car segment. Think VW Golf, Peugeot 1xx, 3xx, 4xx, Mazda 3 etc.pp.
Volkswagen is notorious for this “discounted special edition” scheme, as Bertel notes in his article.
But it just isn’t fitting for a luxury goods maker. And AFAIK, Porsche has never done that when they were still independent.
I mean, seriously – will there be a Bentley Continental Special Discount Edition now that the new iteration is soon coming to the market?? Did Lamborghini sell their last Murcielagos as The Penny Pincher’s Special Edition? How about Ferrari? Would they ever do something like that?
Porsche needs to set itself apart from the rest of the lowly Volkswagen product line, not adopt cheap sales strategies from the mass market segment.
Thanks Bertel, interesting stuff. I just checked out the Porsche site’s “web special” on the black edition…
Black on black, with painted black console and instruments. Bose surround and turbo rims. This is a very classy segue piece.
Poor, poor Porsche gets beaten up here regularly for gouging its customers, and now for offering them a deal. Seems like they just can’t do *anything* right.
This is a very smart way of getting rid of this generation’s extra parts. The rich and working wealthy have also been hit by the recession. Getting a little something extra (and in this case, it’s not quite much) always feels good, even if you have a lot more zeros before the decimal on your check.
Agreed with Jkross. They have a pile of parts or contracts to buy those parts, know what is and is not selling, and “give away” those parts. I once bought a loaded Mercury Mystique (contour) with “packages” which were free.
Call this what it is….The Porsche Wolfsburg Edition….
Loved the old Los Bravos classic. Reminds me of listening to it on a car radio as a kid while my older brother drove the wheels off my father’s decidedly non-Porsche four door sedan.
I couldn’t watch the video at work, but I’ve had “Black Is Black” stuck in my head ever since I read this article this morning.
Great tune. Thanks.