How Porsche Became The New Ferrari

Описание: #porsche #porschegt3 #porsche911

If you want to buy a high performance or special edition 911, like a GT3 or S/T, you can't just walk into the dealership and order it, you have to have a special relationship with the owner of the dealership, you have to have a history of buying specific used vehicles from that dealership and you have to pay additional markup fees on top of what you're already paying for your new 911.

The second cultural difference between Porsche and Ferrari, was that Porsche drivers were always bragging about how many miles their car had, while Ferrari drivers were always bragging about how few miles their car had.
But today, the majority of high performance and special edition 911s are sold to investors who lock them away in storage until it's time to flip the car to the next investor who will lock it away in storage.
The best example of this cultural change is the GT3 RS. When the first couple generations of the GT3 RS came out, their owners picked them up from the dealership and took them straight to the track. But today if someone takes a new GT3 RS to the track, they're an absolute hero.
So what exactly happened that caused Porsche to change its attitude towards its customers, and its cars?
Back in 1993 Porsches sales had dropped to just 3700 cars for all of North America, and the company was hemorrhaging money. This caused them to make radical changes to their lineup, and their first change, was to start selling an entry level car. In 1996 Porsche introduced the Boxster and sales increased nearly 80% the following year. Over the next few years sales remained fairly consistent so in order to boost sales again, Porsche decided to start selling 4-door cars, and in 2002 Porsche introduced their first ever SUV, the Cayenne, and sales increased nearly 50% in the following year.
Then in 2009 Porsche introduced the Panamera, and sales increased 50% the following year in 2010. And in 2015 Porsche started selling the Mecan, and just one year later ,in 2016, Porsche sold nearly 1500% more cars than they did back in 1993. But Porsche didn't stop there, and in 2019 they introduced the Taycan.
By 2020, over 78% of Porsche's sales were 4 door vehicles. Porsche was now making so much money from selling Mecans, Cayennes, Panameras and Taycan's that they no longer needed to sell the 911 to be profitable.
But then, on september 29th of 2022, something even bigger happened. Porsche became a publicly traded company on the frankfurt stock exchange, making profitability more important than ever.
And this is when Porsche got their next idea.
The 911 has always been Porsche's halo car, but it was also somewhat obtainable. Even a working class person who was smart with their money and saved up for a few years could own a brand new 911, unlike a new Ferrari, which had always been far out of reach of the working class.
And back in the day that was what made porsche such a cool company. They actually made the 911 for people who liked driving, not for people who saw cars as investments or social status placeholders. But today that version of Porsche has been locked away like a delivery mileage only 2016 911R.
With the entry level Boxster and Cayman being part of their lineup for years, and Porsche's worldwide annual sales in the hundreds of thousands, it was now time to reposition the 911 from being a high-performance luxury car, to being an ultra exclusive car.
Porsche began introducing so many different "special edition" 911s that it became difficult to understand why they were special, and many were just parts bin cars or even basic 911s with decals and a special badge. But Porsche had done such a good job of manipulating the 911 market, that simply attaching the words "special edition" to even the most pedestrian of 911s would allow for huge price increases.
But amongst the masses of not-so-special edition 911s, there are some that truely are special, like the 935/19, the GT2 RS Clubsport 25 and the 911 S/T. But almost all of these cars have ended up in the hands of investors and will never be driven the way they were intended to
Now I understand a manufacturer wanting to produce exclusive limited edition vehicles, but Porsche's current business model of making ultra high performance track cars and only selling them to investors goes against everything Porsche stood for in the first 70 years of their existence.
If you want to make collectable cars and sell them to investors, fine, but bragging about the lap times of your latest track car and only selling them to people who will never take them on a race track is just counterintuitive and silly.
What porsche needs to do is make special edition cars for people who will never drive them, they can be made out of porcelain and painted with gold, and then make high performance cars for people who love drive, but produce them in volumes large enough so they can be sold to the people who will actually drive them!