Editor’s Note: This week, Peter takes on Porsche, with its staggering product lineup and even more staggering prices, as it attempts to find its place in a market where both its customers and dealers have run out of patience. On The Table, Stellantis goes to its rapidly depleting well again with its Jeep brand, and MINI (remember it?) has come up with yet another special edition for a brand that was completely out of ideas ten years ago. Our video this week is a riveting interview with the great Dan Gurney. Our AE Song of the Week is the classic “Radar Love” by Golden Earring. In Fumes, Peter gives us Part IV of his new series, “Famous Front Rows.” And finally, in The Line, we have MotoGP results from the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria, and IMSA SportsCar Championship results from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. Remember, you can read past issues by scrolling down and clicking on “Next 1 Entries.” Onward! -WG
By Peter M. DeLorenzo
Detroit. Porsche CEO Michael Leiters wants everyone, meaning its U.S. dealers and their customers, to wait a minute while the brand figures out just what the hell it’s doing in the midst of the capricious tariffs put in by Dear Leader, self-inflicted product missteps and other assorted chaotic influences in the current market.
The only problem for Leiters is this fundamental question: Who has that kind of time? Remember, this is a company that made the fateful decision to turn its best-selling vehicle by far in this market – the Macan – to an EV-only offering for 2027. Dealers and customers are apoplectic, as in WTF are you guys thinking?
Leiters & Co. have thrown themselves at the mercy of their dealers, asking them for their patience, while promising an all-new ICE/Hybrid Macan sometime in 2028. What does that mean, realistically? It means that Porsche won’t be bringing a new, non-EV Macan to this market for two years from right now. Oh, Porsche operatives will insist that it will get here sooner than that, but who’s kidding whom? In the present state of the business, that’s an eternity.
And let’s not forget, Porsche just dropped what I considered to be the best driver’s vehicle it made – the 718 – completely this year, which was more than a head-scratcher; it was just flat-out stupid.
So, what’s left for Porsche dealers to push on the Porsche faithful? There’s a brand-new 2027 Cayenne, which thankfully is available in both EV and ICE versions. There’s the Taycan EV, which admittedly is an acquired taste for a lot of Porsche intenders, the Panamera four-door sedan, and a larger-than-Cayenne SUV aimed at the U.S. and Chinese markets. (Needless to say, I’m not enthused about that vehicle in the least.) And last but not least, there’s the cornerstone of the Porsche brand, the 911.
Leiters promises to boost the 911 even more, which is hard to believe, since the model proliferation under the 911 nameplate is almost incomprehensible at this point.
Then there’s Porsche pricing. We all know that the Porsche option list is a monument to unbridled greed and unrepentant usurious behavior, but it’s the base prices that have now reached a new level of out-of-control, and there doesn’t seem to be any hope of stopping the increases.
To give you an example, the base price of the Cayenne Electric is $109,000, and it goes all the way up to the Cayenne Turbo Electric at $163,000; except I saw one at my local Porsche dealer showroom that stickered for $198,000. Ouch, Baby.
And then there’s the Taycan, which starts at $111,900 (good luck finding one for that) and goes all the way up to the Taycan Turbo GT with Weissach Package, which goes for $243,700.
The Panamera starts at $113,000 and goes all the way up to the Panamera Turbo SE-Hybrid for $245,200.
The aforementioned Macan Electric starts at $80,300 (again, good luck finding a “base” model), and the Macan Turbo Electric starts at $112,700.
And last, but not least, there’s the Porsche 911, which starts at $135,500, but you’ll never find a base 911 on a dealer lot; you’d have to order one that way. Other 911 pricing lowlights?
The 911Carrera T starts at $148,000.
The 911 Carrera S starts at $156,200.
The 911 Carrera 4S starts at $164,500.
The 911 Carrera S with manual transmission starts at $167,100.
The 911 Carrera GTS starts at $181,000.
The 911 Carrera 4 GTS starts at $189,300.
The 911 Cabriolet starts at $149,400, and other variants go all the way up to the 911 Carrera 4 GTS cabriolet at $203,300.
The 911 Targa 4S starts at $180,200 and goes up to $203,300.
The 911 GT3 starts at $235,800.
The 911 GT3 S/C starts at $273,000.
The 911 Turbo S starts at $270,300.
The 911 Turbo S Cabriolet starts at $284,300.
And finally, there’s the 911 GT3 90 F.A. Porsche, which starts at a whopping $387,000.
Why bother to go through this exercise? To demonstrate the fact that Mr. Leiters and his fellow Porsche operatives have their hands full. The days of unimpeachable belief and blind allegiance to the Porsche brand are over, for customers and dealers alike. With the average Porsche priced at $100,000 and up (you can forget about the base price of the Macan EV, that’s merely a suggestion), Porsche dealers are coming to the realization that the Porsche brand has now ascended to a level of luxury pricing that as of just a few years ago would have been unheard of.
For Porsche intenders and shoppers, once a vehicle crosses the $100,000 threshold, there are more and more options to consider. As for Porsche’s electric offerings in particular, they are merely present and accounted for compared to the new BMW iX3 SUV and i3 sport sedan, whose advanced architectures are setting new standards for the entire industry. Those machines will offer an entirely new – and better – option for serious EV buyers.
But the reality is even worse than that for Porsche and the VW Group. At Porsche, demand is declining rapidly – especially in China – and sharply increased costs are forcing CEO Michael Leiters to take drastic steps to restore profitability. How drastic? Porsche is cutting almost 9,000 jobs to stay afloat. And remember, this is the same company that once boasted that it was “the most profitable car company in the world.”
To be sure, I will get pushback from the hardcore Porsche enthusiasts, but the reality is that they are few and far between now. The 911 is one thing, and I’m only semi-confident Porsche will not screw that up. But Porsche’s other offerings are another thing altogether. They are grasping for attention in a market with a painfully short attention span, while offering models that are now pretty much ordinary, other than the Porsche name and crest, especially now that they’re sharing more and more underneath with other vehicles in the VW Group (aka Audi).
So, Porsche headman Leiters’ plea to its dealers and its dwindling faithful to be patient while the company figures things out would be laughable if it weren’t so obviously pathetic.
In a drastically altered automotive world, the collective response from potential buyers about the idea of being patient with Porsche is, “As If.”
And that’s the High-Octane Truth for this week.
Editor’s Note: Click on “Next 1 Entries” at the bottom of this page to see previous issues. – WG