Just a thought about the upcoming Porsche SUV

With gas prices on the rise, the evening news has been abound with special reports bashing SUVs...

some dealers have come on to say that it has affected their SUV sales...

Obviously the Porsche SUV buyers will be the affluent types, but can the debut be coming at a horrible time?

Hopefully it is not damaging to Porsche...I am just pissed that they diverted race money for that hunk of crap...and it may not even prove lucrative...and if they lose money on this venture...which division will suffer...obviously their race division

Porsche used to be synonymous with endurance racing, rally racing, sports car racing...now there are independent teams are struggling to keep the Porsche marquee above water while the BMW, Audi, and now Bentleys are reaping all the accolades!!!!

Oops. . .sorry for the dbl post. . .

[This message has been edited by Mike Feinstein (edited 05-17-2001).]

When gas hits $3 a gallon you'll see SUV's abandoned on the side of the road. . .with keys in the ignition. . .(and maybe the occasional 930). . .I'll be keeping my eye open for one of those, Ha!

Honestly, their value will surely nosedive and 90 lb tennis moms will have to resort to driving the family Corolla to the grocery store (perish the thought)rather than the 7000 lb Excursion. I can't imagine that an $80,000 Cayenne would be worth even half that one year later. I still don't get it. Seems to me that Porsche is about 5 years too late to cash in on the craze.

Uh, priced used 924's lately? Even Porsche can make corporate mistakes. And at that level? The stakes are in the stratosphere. I, for one, am grateful Idon't have to play there.

The funny thing about a lot of rich people is that they will blow money on lots of really expensive things, but then are super sensitive about other things that involve relatively small amounts of money.

Gas prices seem to be something that they are very sensitive to!

I've said it was a mistake from the beginning, not because of higher gas prices, but because, as Mike says, its 5 years too late. The fad was already dying, gas prices will just speed it up a bit. It has to die, because, as Mike points out, it just doesn't make sense for a 100lb woman and her 30 lb kid to be driving to the park and the grocery store in 7000 lbs of truck. Things that don't make sense can go for a while (people were paying money for Pet Rocks for a while, and that made no sense), but they eventually die.

Yup, Porsche is (as usual) horribly wrong with one, especially as the whole justification of the SUV project was it would make the company less susceptable to world recessions. Hah hah hah.

The new SUV is the first thing to get scrubbed from punters shopping lists when a recession kicks in.

I'd actually like to see the company go the other way - sort of back to its roots, by producing a no-frills sportscar based on cheap VW components... plastic seats, rubber mats on the floor, wind-up windows, light and agile, beautifully made, with a tuned engine.

But I'm probably crazy!

In fact, Porsche have a long and sad history of producing indifferent cars. In my not so humble opinion, its only produced two really good cars, and one outstanding one.

The two good cars are the 356 and the Boxster, and the outstanding one is... well, we all own one.

The 924 was over-priced and underpowered and very bland. The 914 was fun but the most butt-ugly sportscar of its time (maybe all time) and in its normal form was very underpowered. The 928 was very expensive, very heavy, surprisingly fragile, and never sold as it was meant to.

The 944 was what the 924 should have been from the start, but suffered by looking very similar to a 928 - bland.

And nothing I've seen or read about the SUV convinces me that its going to be any better...

I just hope the company survives.

- roGER

Lets take a look at what the automotive market is doing. The BMW X5 SUV (SAV) is selling like hot cakes. There is about a one year waiting list. And BMW is making about 250 + of these cars a day. So, the folks that want one of these fancy SUVs will still continue to buy them.

What I do expect to see in the next few years is the return of the Diesel. BMW makes a Diesel X5 for the European market.

Anyway, just my $0.03 (inflation)

Rogerk, I agree with a lot of that.

I had a 924 in the '80s. Being a Porsche nut, I can overlook a lot of shortcomings when the car is wearing The Badge, but the reality is the 924 was a joke. It was rough riding (very bouncy on the highway), way underpowered (c'mon 90 hp in a modern car?), the engine (which is the heart of a car) was really coarse and rough (it was just a very pedestrian Audi 100 unit). The interior was put together very poorly, using very cheap materials (the dash pretty much cracked instantly upon coming into contact with UV rays). Objectively, it just was not a very good car (it would have been a mediocre car even if it were badged and sold as a VW). To top it off, it was *ridiculously* overpriced as a new car (its price as a used car is just about right). Really an insult to anyone who bought one of those new, IMO.

I've also had a 914! I am a huge fan of the 914, the idea was a good one, but the execution was not. The styling certainly does not have universal appeal (although I actually like it). The main problem was that the early cars were not that good, by the time it hit its stride with the '73 and '74 2.0, it was too late. The 914 does have a lot going for it, as evidenced by its surprisingly strong and growing following among enthusiasts (something that will NEVER, EVER happen with the 924, it is permanently relegated to the scrapheap of history).

Never had a 928, driven a few and they are actually quite fun. They were hugely expensive, though, I'd imagine that didn't help to sell them. Seemed like a good car, though, if one was looking for a heavy GT type car.

I like the 944 a lot, maybe not enough to actually buy one, but I think they are pretty nice cars all around, esp. the 86 and up with the updated interior. It certainly was a very hot seller in the mid 80s, but again, it seemed that by the 90s the price had just risen too high. If you look at the sales figures, for whatever reasons (a lot probably had to do with the economy in general) sales of the 944 and its variants really dropped off a cliff in the late 80s and early 90s.

There was some talk about a lightweight, low cost Porsche a few years ago. Some concept drawings were shown in R&T a few years ago, under the heading "Return of the 914?" I think it would be a good idea, although not without controversy. Moving "downmarket" is always controversial and risky.

Take a look around, there is not one independent production sports car company left in the world other than Porsche. Maybe the reality is that such a thing cannot exist anymore, so the SUV (or a sedan, etc.) is necessary for Porsche to remain independent. It just seems like unfortunate timing, for a whole lot of reasons.