[jmshepard]

Wendelin Wiedeking. The Porsche AG CEO came up with our AE "Huh? of the Week" with his answer to a question posed to him at the Frankfurt Auto Show by a team of Automotive News reporters. After asking about the upcoming Porsche Panamera four-door sedan - which Wiedeking pronounced as being "...a great new car for Porsche - and it will be a Porsche" - AN then asked the following question: Will you then be a luxury vehicle company rather than a luxury sports car company? To which Wiedeking replied: "We will be the producer of very sporty luxury cars. That's it. Our core business is and will be sports cars in the future." Huh? Well which is it, Wendelin? Are you a maker of very sporty luxury cars - a phrase we'd never in our wildest imagination associate with Porsche before you came on board? Or, are you a sports car company? We think you have answered the billion-dollar question for hard-core Porsche enthusiasts once and for all, even though you then tried to correct yourself. The truth is, Wendelin, that you're personally responsible for taking Porsche away from its "maker of exclusive sports cars" roots. Sporty luxury cars? "Sporty" is the term Detroit always used when they didn't have the real performance goods in the 80s and 90s. It's blatantly offensive and exposes you for the mercenary you really are - one who marches to the siren song of short-term profits above all else. With a bloated, overweight and overwrought SUV, and now a four-door sedan (no matter how hard your marketing mavens try to cloak it in that "four-door coupe" bull**** language), Porsche's "core" business is no longer about making sports cars, Wendelin. It's about making "very sporty luxury cars." Which means that Porsche is now officially just another car company. Way to go, Wendelin. You've taken Porsche's proud history, when "excellence was expected" and dumbed it down to the lowest common denominator, which is why your favorite description of the company, "the most profitable car company in the world" is now the official corporate moniker for Porsche. And here we thought the disgraced Jurgen Schrempp was as bad as it gets when it comes to German car executives...