Carpokes Porsche Forum

Maruscmn wrote: Sun May 19, 2024 9:31 am “ All of this might explain why tiny Ferrari, which is effectively immune from this mess, today has a market value well above, Ford, GM, Stellantis, and on par with Volkwagen despite producing less than 0.01% the number of cars.”

And “ . If you are sitting on the VW Brand Management Board, you are looking potentially at an “extinction” event”

Great article and sobering to say the least.

Much appreciated. Glad you enjoyed it.

blueline wrote: Sat May 18, 2024 6:50 am I'm loyal to Porsche and the cars they make - they are marvelously designed, engineered and built automobiles but the "let them eat cake" business model you mentioned does seem to fit the company to a degree at the moment. Current CEO Oliver Blume said as much last year at an annual press conference if you read between the lines.

https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/2023/co ... 31485.html

Of course, besides the company, its dealers, restrictive allocations, ADMs, etc., there are buyers who seem willing to pay any amount for whatever it is they desire. The offerings and sales at Bring-A- Trailer and other similar sites are often eye openers. Last month's Stuttgart Market Letter by David Whitlock wrote this: "The other nice surprise from March was a number of 2023 911 Sport Classics coming to market, as prior to this month, the highly sought after Porsche had been fairly quiet on the auction circuit. The first car to sell was a Gentian Blue example with 52 miles that brought $472,500 followed by a launch-spec car at $445,000. The top-selling Sport Classic, though, was a Paint to Sample Underberg Green car with 10 miles hammering for $478,000."

Seemingly endless legions of ultra- wealthy buyers worldwide are clamoring for high end Porsches. It's part of what's distorting the market and it's obvious that Porsche is going after those buyers - not what I like but not unexpected in a frenzy. Unfortunately, many of Porsche's long-time loyal customers are being left behind.

For those of us in U.S. and Canada it doesn't help that North America is no longer at the top of the Porsche world due to the growth of the worldwide market. China is now Porsche's largest market.

But, things like this are always changing and this will be no different. There are clouds on the horizon from many directions and some auto manufacturers could be suffering and changing directions sooner than later. Porsche is not completely immune to that possibility.

The Financial Times “Future of the Car” Summit a few days ago in London had many CEOs, board members, brand honchos, etc. of auto manufacturers (including VW Group) there making presentations. There were revelations outlined in the article, at least for me.

https://ssoreport.com/ft-future-of-the-car-2024

Just posted this up on Supercar EVs: https://ssoreport.com/supercar-evs which I thought might be of interest.

@SSO

Re: "Supercar EVs: Stillborn"
https://ssoreport.com/supercar-evs

Another succinct and excellent revelation of a small slice of what's not widely reported. (The world's media is so very poor - guess it's always been that way.)

Anyway, this one is especially interesting since the discussion involves a few of the world's Supercar manufacturers and what they are saying (and doing). I pay attention to much of what little I here from Matt Rimac - he is indeed a brilliant and forward-thinking visionary imo.

It would be great to be a fly-on-the-wall in many of the exotic auto industry's boardrooms these days during discussions of this hot topic that is reaching a critical juncture. There are going to be failures, companies going under, executive turmoil (ie: firings), and more, some possibly worse than the aforementioned.

Thanks for posting the article and I hope that you garner a lot of readers!

“ Michael Leiters stated very clearly that he was not sold on EV as a powertrain solution for Supercars given both the weight and lack of emotion”

Dang. Nailed it for me. However I am not in the income bracket for my opinion to count:-/

Having spent over 30 years in the Automotive Sales business I have been the victim of confused marketing by various Manufacturers over the years I think consumers would be surprised by the fact that virtually all Manufacturers think the consumer is their customer when in reality their Dealerships are their actual, direct customer. Even though Dealership daily hear what customers want, need, or desire, it is often like pulling teeth to get companies to listen or to work directly with their Dealers to view what was happening in the trenches. I was fortunate in the last third of the Viper's build that Dodge recognized this and discussed things with their larger Dealers. What seems like a good idea in a Boardroom with a room full of Marketing Executives ( who hardly any have ever sold anything ) is often counter to what the buyer wants , but then they do not actually talk to them, it has become just a silly system of sending out surveys. Marketing can even take the buyer's desires into account without answering all the questions, like would they even pay for all the fun and expensive items they desire.
Right now with Toyota deciding to go primarily ICE/Hybrid there are more and more rumors others are reevaluating their builds ( looks like 718s have another year reprieve ) since the infrastructure is not ramping up fast enough, nor is the buyer trending EV very quickly now.
Porsche has made errors in the past and will likely make some in the future, but let's hope their enthusiast focus returns because as much as I like our Macan S, the sports cars are what drive the Sales Passion if not the actual car purchases. I know quite a few buyers who desire a 911 or 718 in their future, but the Cayenne, Macan, etc. is what they can acquire now, planning to fulfill their sports car dreams in the future.