Daily Slideshow: Does Porsche's Future Reside in Family Vehicles?
Porsche sells twice as many SUVs as sports cars. With sales figures like that, one starts to wonder at what point it will affect their image as a company.
Porsche shifting gears for the SUV market?
Here's a fact you may or may not have known before today: Porsche sells twice as many SUVs as sports cars. With sales figures like that, one starts to wonder at what point it will affect their image as a company. The hardcore portion of the Porsche fanbase is sure to have the toughest time grappling with whatever changes these sales figures are implying. Be that as it may, the change of focus has been unambiguously grand for the company. In fact, Porsche is doing better than ever.
One small part of an industry-wide trend
Porsche obviously weren't the ones to spark the SUV craze. If anything, they were opportunists, jumping on an inescapable trend. They're not the only ones to have made this shift either.
Most notably, Ford has expressed their intent to double down as a truck company, delegating most of their new resources to further widen production of their truck and SUV lines. It especially makes sense in Ford's case, when you consider their F-Series already has the sort of reputation money could never buy. Even in the case of Porsche, while some market analysts have been cynical about the shift of focus, the long-term success of their Cayenne all but proves the cards are in Porsche's favor with this.
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What of the sports cars, though?
The sports cars are here to stay. Obviously. Porsche are under no threat of giving up the cars people know them for. Where a transition like that would work for Ford on the merit of the F-150 alone, Porsche would have to effectively rebuild their brand consciousness up again from the basics, all at the cost of a lot of resentful fans. Porsche's true calling should always be able to find its own success, but the sports cars will probably never be central to their bottom line and sales again.
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You can't put a cost on reputation
The viability of sports cars is tighter in an age of efficiency-minded customers and emission regulation. Sports car sales (not just Porsche's) tend to rise with economic prosperity and die out abruptly in times of recession (the 2008 crisis killed off Honda's S2000, among others).
Sports cars occupy a powerful niche, however, and not just for the fact that there's less quality competition to vie against. Unlike an SUV, a sports car is something people tend to get really excited about. Porsche's Boxster or Carrera were never meant to have the wide profit margins of their family fare, but they get people talking in awe.
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However, certain charms have crossed over
The Macan and Cayenne aren't the sort of Porsches we used to dream about, but you can bet there are common shades between them and the Carrera-- or even the classic 911. It's worthwhile to remember they're a luxury brand, and many of the charms you'll find in a Porsche's interior are going to be common among all their models, regardless whether it's built to race, or built to pick the kids up. The signature Porsche driving smoothness draws a throughline between the SUVs and sports cars. They're still sporting and sleek; it just happens you can fit more inside of them.
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Where does Porsche's brand identity stand?
There's even an entire Forbes piece based on framing the 911 as the still-reigning core of Porsche's identity; turns out there are quite a few strong arguments to back it up. Cast aside everything else; Porsche's greatest accomplishment is arguably the way they've successfully preserved the 911's original character over a 50-year span. If Chevrolet's Corvette line is admirable because it's reinvented successfully so many times, the 911 is a treasure for the opposite reason. Everything else in the auto industry has changed so much around it. Looking at the other hand, Porsche's flagship product has remained remarkably close to the feel and look of the classic 911 they've built their reputation upon. And it is their flagship product; ask anyone (maybe except sales analysts) what car first comes to mind.
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The Porsche legacy will always be the 911
The 911 is more than a sports car. It's the Porsche identity, and the standard their other cars (sporting or not) have been designed to follow. It's been around that long, and if there comes a point where SUVs fall out of favor and Porsche has to reconsider their options again, you had better believe the 911 will be there coming out on the other side.
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