subshooter

Why not build a factory in the US for US customers or China for Chinese customers? I doubt if many of us would have a problem with that. BMW does it. Maybe we would get a lot more NA engines in the 911 lineup?

P.S. There are plenty of Porsches built in Bratislavia BTW. Seriously. (at least the bodies...before they are shipped to Leipzig for assembly). They are doing fine. No one cares. Few even know that.

ranger22

I feel your pain, but if you think this is bad, don't ever try to join the Ferrari "family."

Yippiekiaye

since Ferrari is now a public company. Go in, pay your deposit and wait your turn. 6-18 months later you ge lt your car. No more games.

subshooter

Yeah.....I don't like having my sports cars in the service center because they keep breaking down...... lol Not joining that family. I've thought about switching to McLaren but really like Porsche's reliability and "livability" with the car. I just need something more than my 981 and 991.2 right now. I am disappointed in my 2018 991.2.....it doesn't make me "feel" anything which is why I just started following this forum.

LexVan

Well that's very unfortunate. I think the 991.2 really needs be be outfitted with the "S" and the PowerKit. But, I'm unfortunately changing the subject.

Drifting

More power won't change the lack of emotion and connection that subshooter described. I have a friend with a 991.2 GTS, which is his DD, and I was previously using my GT3 as a DD. We switched cars for 2 weeks, including a saturday we spent driving twisties. His car which is basically the 991.2 powerkit you speak of, clearly had more torque than mine and was very fast. It also sounded terrible, lag was modest but still annoying, the SPASM was good, but nothing like the glued to the road feeling I have in my GT3, and the GTS PDK was far inferior to the PDK-S in my GT3.
The GTS was simply a very powerful clinical, sterile, rocketship.....................and I couldn't wait to get back into my GT3! It is a visceral experience everytime I drive my GT3, even a very short drive, compared to the feeling of driving a powerful boring appliance in the .2 GTS. And I don't see the point of paying the extra Porsche money, to buy an appliance, not a driving experience.

I have absolutely no interest in any modern turbo product from Porsche. Other than the GT cars, no other Porsche even exists for me anymore (and I loved my previous 987 and 997 cars). Good thing for Porsche than the new Alibaba millionaires having been buying P-cars in China while turbo Carrera, Boxster, and Cayman sales are all declining in North America (as more discerning drivers look elsewhere)

ipse dixit

PAG does not make the same type of profit margin with a GT car as it does with non-GT cars.

So there's a significant opportunity cost to PAG to allocate manufacturing capacity to produce GT cars.

Plus, the demand for GT car ownership isn't nearly as high as for non-GT cars. Easy to get fooled by the fishbowl ecosystem of RL GT forums. In other words, many people want to drive or experience a GT3, very few actually want to own one.

Jim55

Pretty much this.

Chicago Mike

To a certain degree, but try asking for a 488 GTO allocation...

OldGuy

The other thing about Ferraris, when I got in the game in the 2000 time frame with my 993TT Ferrari guys were driving for free. They could sell their 2 year old 360 for more than they paid for it and trade up to the 430 for free almost. But those days are gone. I think they over produced because the 360s have depreciated to lows I never thought I would see and 430s are in the 130s 458s are in the high 150+ Californias in the low 100's and I never saw that in the early 2000's ( on fairly current models)
I am no expert but I never saw fairly current F-Cars in this price range.

Oldmxnut

Ultra exclustivity.. is to have supply equal demand minus 100, not demand minus 1 as the saying goes. Plus I have said before, US prices (even ignoring taxes) are super cheap comparatively to ROW. So the business model makes sense to me a bit. Keep supply short for the GT cars etc, try and partially cover the cost but make the profit on the general lines supported by the brand exclusivity generated on the GT loss leaders. Send proportionally more vehicles to the premium markets (Eg. Aus gets more GT per capita then US) , etc. The Porsche business model I get....

But its the US Dealers business model that I don't get. Its these guys that potentially risk damaging the brand as they try and play the demand off against the supply for a short term dollar. Then with a damaged brand, less general line vehicles will be sold. I think one thing saving this from being too obvious is that the guy getting peeved off about missing out on a GT car isn't buying 2 or 3 macans, a couple of 718's and a Cayenne... Someone else is that isn't even considering a GT car so us being being miffed here isn't doing too much brand damage... yet..

STG

In my opinion, they should NOT have moved 718 production back to Zuffenhausen. This would have allowed more capacity for 911 production. There should be a 4 banger ban in Zuffenhausen.

ajw45

I've seen this mentioned before but I must be missing something. If Porsche isn't meeting demand, artificially or not, why not raise prices and make same margin as any other car in the lineup? I guess I don't understand why Porsche would choose to lose margin and volume, the scarcity model should be to maintain margins...

STG

Porsche wants the GT cars to be more limited by design. Yes, it does feed the marketing hype.

They also use them as a reward system to their dealers as they shove other models down their throats. Why would they want to lose their ace card??

SToronto

I don't think you'll get the answer here. There's plenty of conjecture some of which might form the truth.

I agree it's a funky model that is inconsistent at best from dealer to dealer. I've been trying to wrap my head around it as well from a business and customer experience point of view. Would love to get a straight answer from PAG on the approach. Anybody tried sending Andreas an email?