Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off–then, I account it high time to get to a Porsche Club meeting and annoy perfectly decent upper-middle-class people.

One of my favorite shticks is to sit there at the wine-tasting/slow-food dinner/whatever and say, “I love my Boxster, but I love the Cayman so much more.” Knowing nods from around the table. “It’s just that I like the convertible too.” More knowing nods. “What I really wish Porsche would do…”

Pause.

“…is make a Cayman convertible..”

Dead silence.

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Time to “Revive The Passion”. The Porsche Club of America wants its members to get more excited about their money-raising raffles. Although the raffles usually sell out — I’ve waited too long in the past and missed my chance to win cars like a Cayman 2.7 or Cayenne S — presumably the rate of sale is decreasing.

The first step was to offer cash as an option: disgruntled PCA members who were sick of Porsche’s many concessions to modern cost-cutting reality could then go buy the car they really wanted. Now the club has come up with an even better idea.

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Despite the deep ties between his firm and Volkswagen, Ferry Porsche firmly believed that Porsches could only be Porsches if the company remained truly independent. “Independence,” he says in the video above, “has always been the attitude at Porsche.” But as the latest addition to the Volkswagen empire, tasked with developing mass-market architectures and planning Porsche-brand versions of the Audi Q5 and Volkswagen BlueSport, Porsche’s culture has little choice but to change. But will becoming a good team player within the VW-Audi-Seat-Skoda-Bentley-Lamborghini-Bugatti strategy kill off the spirit that made Porsche great? Or can cultural independence survive the VW takeover?

In June, we reported about a catfight between Porsche and Audi. The bitching and eye-scratching was about who will design the kit for all future sports cars of the Volkswagen empire. The contenders: Audi and Porsche. The thinking was that the fight is just for show. And it was. If Automobilwoche [sub] has it straight, then Porsche will not just develop the mid-engined kit for all sportscars. Porsche will lead the engineering of the complete kit and kaboodle. (Read More…)

TTAC’s writers don’t always agree with each other, but we can’t help but rub off on each other a little bit. After all, as our Jack Baruth puts it, “great artists steal.” Lately we’ve been treated to a tour of Jack’s love-hate relationship with the Porsche brand in his take on Paul Niedermeyer’s “Deadly Sins” series. And if the latest news on Porsche’s product plans [via Auto Motor und Sport] are anything to go on, we can probably expect more Baruthian takedowns of Zuffenhausen’s flights of fancy going forward.

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As established in a previous article, the Volkswagen-Porsche 914 was rather more profitable for Volkswagen than it was for Porsche. No wonder, then, that VW was anxious to repeat the experience. This time, Porsche was explicitly hired as the engineering subcontractor, and the end product was meant to be badged solely as a Volkswagen. The result was what you see above: “EA 425”, a front-engine sporting hatchback using the four-cylinder water-cooled engine from the Audi sedans (and, infamously, the Volkswagen LT van).

The energy crisis made VW reconsider the production of a rear-wheel-drive sporting car. The bigwigs decided to produce the Scirocco instead. At that point, somebody had the bright idea: Hey, let’s sell the project back to Porsche and build the cars for them! Cue the ominous music…

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Oops! Under the influence of “Ketel One Citroen” I misnumbered this. Fixed now – jb

During the Seventies, Porsche was, as Katt Williams might say, in turmoil. Some very strong-willed men were fighting to determine the direction of what was then a very small firm. Ernst Fuhrmann, famous within the company for developing the quad-cam “Carrera” engine that made the 550 Spyder such a giant-killer, was running the show, and he wanted the 911 dead. His arguments were all quite valid: the 911 was not aging well, it was not selling well, and nobody had any idea whatsoever how to make a decade-old car conform to a raft of upcoming safety and emissions regulations. (Read More…)

Great artists steal, and I’m obviously inspired by Paul Niedermeyer’s GM’s Deadly Sin series here. I am currently the owner of three Porsches, as pathetic as that may be, and I’ve experienced firsthand the many ways in which Porsche disappoints its fans and buyers. Few companies have been as comprehensively whitewashed by the media and the corporate biographers, but the truth is available to those of us who wish to look a bit harder.

We will start with the big betrayals, of course, and the unassuming fastback you see above represents perhaps the worst of Porsche’s many middle fingers to the customer base. It is a 1999 Porsche 911, known to everyone in the world as the “996”.

From 1964 to 1998, the 911 evolved on an incremental basis. As with the first and last Volkswagen Beetles, there are very, very few parts which survived the thirty-four-year journey unchanged, but there’s an amazing amount of interchangeability. It is possible to “update” a 1971 911T to look just like a 1998 Carrera 2S, and it’s also possible to “backdate” a 1994 911 Carrera to look like a classic 1973 Carrera RS. Both of these offenses against human decency have occurred many times, incidentally. Take a look here to see a rather lovely example of a “964” turned into a “long-hood” 911S, in a color that will be familiar to many TTAC readers.

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Today, Porsche decided what everybody thought they would decide: They will build the mid-engined plug-in hybrid 918 Spyder. After all the pomp and circumstance at the auto shows in Geneva and Beijing, it would have been a big let-down if they would have said: “Sorry, it was just an idea. We didn’t really mean it. How about that Cayenne?” (Read More…)

China isn’t Porsche’s largest market quite yet (it’s only a matter of time, now they are #3), but China is now officially the world’s largest market for the Porsche Cayenne. Porsche China CEO Helmut Broeker said it himself to Gasgoo. The luxo-SUV is popular with China’s well-heeled and high-ranking military figures. (Read More…)

It used to be that the U.S. was Porsche’s largest market, even in the double nickel days. Number two was the land of the Autobahn, Porsche home market Germany. This is about to change. (Read More…)

The NRA, the Pope, Porsche and Piech, all eyes were on the Supreme Court for the last few days: Gun owners watched the Chicago case (right to arm bears upheld.) Accountants and CPAs monitored the treatment of their favorite boondoggle, a.k.a. Sarbanes-Oxley (upheld.) Rome said “oh my God” when they heard that a lawsuit that accuses the Vatican of conspiring with U.S. church officials to cover up sex abuse could proceed. Meanwhile, Germany’s attention, from Zuffenhausen to Wolfsburg, was fixated on Morrison v. National Australia Bank, No. 08-1191.  The Supreme Court seriously frustrated attemps by overseas investors who want to drag non-American companies into American courts. Champagne corks popped at Volkswagen and Porsche. The Guardian: “America’s supreme court has told prospective European claimants to take their claims back to Europe.” So what does that have to do with Porsche? (Read More…)

Germany’s Handelsblatt received  rare access to the usually secretive Porsche patriarch Piech. The Chairman of the Volkswagen Supervisory Board has big plans for his family’s company once Porsche has been assimilated. Here is an excerpt from his list of Porsche Plans: (Read More…)

Management changes at Porsche. CEO Macht will be disempowered, or “entmachtet”, as the Germans say. „It becomes clear that Winterkorn will change out the top management at Porsche and will replace it step by step with confidantes from his inner circle,” writes Automobilwoche [sub]. (Read More…)

With apologies to Robert Burns, the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ marketers gang aft agley. That’s certainly what’s happened to MINI’s plan to race a Porsche 911. Porsche said “no thanks” to MINI’s challenge, which is exactly what MINI was looking for. Then Hyundai had to come in and force MINI out of its underdog status, making it defend itself against a cheaper competitor. And the search for a meaningful race-as-marketing-stunt continues…