Carrera-T

Before I get started, happy to hear the entire crew is safe, and so sorry for the owners who lost a car to the fire, especially after such a long wait!

With that said, it sounds like there were 1,100 total Porsches onboard the Felicity Ace. I would assume the majority were Cayenne’s, Macan’s and Taycan’s. From there, we likely have some 911’s and normal 718’s.

Can we estimate how many might have been special and limited production models such as the Spyder and GT4?

Porsche builds about 84,000 cars a year for the North America market. Assuming just a few of the lost vehicles were special 718 GT cars, is it safe to assume that Porsche does not have to rebuild too many GT4’s and Spyder's give the total loss event?

Help me with my twisted logic here.

Zhao

There is a website that lists the deliveries for Porsches each month, i can't find it now but I looked at it not long ago for the numbers in Canada. From that I could definitely tell Porsche builds certain cars in clumps, so from month to month production can vary hugely for niche cars. You can probably pretty accurately gauge what percentage of macans and taycans were on that ship because deliveries are pretty consistent month to month for normal DD vehicles but GT4s for example one month could have 3x the deliveries as the previous month (at least in canada as most deliveries are actually attempted to be made between march and october here) so it'd be hard to say. I also am not sure if Porsche tries to deliver most sports cars in the US in spring/summer/fall.

Carrera-T

Did some more research and found that website which documents production numbers (photo attached). These are 2019 and 2020. So we need to take them with a grain of salt, but given the pandemic and supply chain/chip issues, I would expect they would represent the high water mark.



We have to keep in mind that the Macan and Cayenne make up 66% of the total annual production. And there are different assembly factories, specific to the model.

- Macan and Panamera are built together in Leipzig.
- The Cayenne is built in Slovakia.
- Porsche built a new and dedicated factory for Taycan in Zuffenhausen.
- So this leaves the 911 and 718 (sports car family) which are assembled together, in the same plant, also in Zuffenhausen.

I worked up a spreadsheet and here are my calculations of how many of each model were lost in the 1,100 units on The Felicity Ace.

911 = 162
718 = 68
Taycan = 77 (this could be way off, assuming Taycan production ramped up higher than historical rates)?
Panamera = 67
Cayenne = 331
Macan = 395

Since the 911 and 718 are built in the same factory, add them together and you get 229 sports cars lost. Using historical rates, that plant builds 1095 units per month on average.

Now, of the 229 sports cars (911/718) let’s assume 15% we’re GT cars (i.e.) GT3, GT4 and Spyder. That would total 34 GT cars lost, with 24 being GT3’s and 10 of the 718 variant being GT4 and Spyder’s combined. Maybe 5 GT4’s and 5 Spyder’s on the ship.

Using this logic, it seems to me that a couple of week delay on 911/718 production is plausible given the historical capacity numbers for the sports car factory, specifically the 718 and 911’s. We can even guess that even for the highest production model, the Macan, that the projected 395 cars lost represent less than one week of production capacity.

Some interesting math.

Carrera-T

Here’s my hypothesis, for those that want to crunch or debate the figures.

TXshaggy

I was told there’d be no math involved with RL membership…lol.

Many Caymans also made at a VW overflow plant, hence K in VIN vice S.

In general 700 each GT4/Spyders per year. 60 each per month. 3 ships per month.

20 each GT4/Spyder. Although this time of year is a low point in deliveries.

200 dealers in US so except for those involved not a big impact

Zee Germanz

Let’s hope the rebuilds don’t have a material knock-on to later build slots that have so far secured PCCBs.

remington

How could they not. It's not as though Porsche has redundant capacity lying around. No doubt it will impact future deliveries.

Zee Germanz

The operative word is 'material'.

Selfishly, I hope not many of the 1100 had CCBs.

Zhao

Here is the 718 stats for vehicles sold in the US per month. Sold should mean delivered. March is a low volume month for sports cars sold but April is the top month, so it's possible there was a ton of sports cars on this one but IMO it's likely this ship had far less than average GT cars and other sports cars as they would have probably all been expected to be delivered in march. Most likely the next ships leaving Germany are the ones loaded with sports cars. So hopefully the majority of vehicles affected are macans as potentially the vast majority of people buying those won't be bothered about losing a few months of driving it while the next one gets built.

phefner

@Carrera-T , Don't forget about capacity at Osnabrueck. My GT4 was built there.

Carrera-T

Good point, forgot about the Osnabrueck additional capacity factory! Forgot about that plant.

The graph illustrating 718 production would seem to indicate that the sports car loss may be lower and the Felicity Ace was likely top heavy with SUVs, given the time of year.

At the end of the day, the real world impact to rebuild the lost cars breaks down to about one-week of additional production capacity. Maybe the plants were only running at only run at 70% capacity and Porsche adds an extra shift for a couple of weeks? Maybe they grab some dealer inventory build slots and prioritize lost cars there first? We shall see….

Assuming Porsche can source supplies, parts and now shipping transportation, this event should not create a serious back log on builds and deliveries. Even with the highest volume vehicle, the Macan, they can rebuild the loss in less than a week based on historic capacity rates. It’s 1 week of work, even if you divide 60,000 cars per year by 52 weeks. And again, likely more SUVs to rebuild vs. sports cars. And I don’t see Porsche rebuilding Macan’s at the 911/718 factory, too costly to re-tool.

And for the sports car customers, we represent most likely the minority of the loss of 1,100 vehicles. Break that down to the 718 and speciality cars such as GT4 and Spyder and only a handful were lost and will have to be rebuilt.

This is encouraging news for both the owners who lost cars and have been waiting, and also us newbies who have allocations and are expecting cars this year too.

SBARacing

The math is spot on. My 22 Spyder just got pushed from 6/3 to 6/17.

Carrera-T

@SBARacing did you get the adjustment from your dealer? My 2022 Spyder was scheduled to enter the body shop for production on 4/15/22. I plan to speak with my SA tomorrow.

Post a link to your build spec!

SBARacing

Yep, both TYD and dealer confirmed delayed dates.

http://www.porsche-code.com/PNNS9QG9

wigglenator

How do you know? I got the porsche app message saying scheduled for production (GT4) but no dates.