Bob Rouleau

Guys, are some of us taking the speculation of a journalist rather too seriously? There is no way Porsche will stop the Cayenne/Panamera unless the market for those sorts of vehicles dries up. Cayenne is 50 percent of PAG sales!

The notion of competition with the Toureg is absolute nonsense when you consider that the Piech run firm build the Toureg AND the Audi Q 7 and the Cayenne. VW for the lower end of the market, Audi for the mid to luxury end and Cayenne for the sportier luxury end of the market. No reason to change that.

Porsche needed VW for R and D as well as those stupid CAFE standards. Without a lot of gas misers, we'd be forced into hybrid 911's or something equally silly and certainly not very quick.

Best,

gt2r

Bob,,I responded earlier and you are absolutely correct. If the Panarama and Cayenne don't sell, they would be dropped. Otherwise they will continue to be built and fill out the high end of the 3 brands

Ucube

Exactly, Alan. That Cayenne V6 sales figure clearly demonstrates PAG's focus on selling the brand. The purpose appears to be preserving the price-point commensurate with the badge, and as such, a sub-$40k model simply doesn't align with that objective. Of course, the purists are entitled to interpret that as the "real" devaluation of the brand.

Most customers are buying the badge more than the merits of the product, and PAG is perfectly fine with that as a high-priced premium seller. From the September '09 issue of Road & Track (which billed itself as a Porsche special issue):

...the rumored "baby Boxster" based on VW's BlueSport concept apparently won't happen, as a company official recently said "there's no business case for Porsche in small cars."

Alan Smithee

Well, my point was that the heavily incentivized Cayenne is effectively in the high $30k range, yet offers nothing that the brand stands for.

You are absolutely correct that every one of the Cayenne V6 buyers, the majority of Porsche's customers, bought the label; the Cayenne V6 as a product has no real merit. It is not a good thing when your core customer base buys the label and not the merits of the product. A fashionable label now may be played out next season.

As for what a "company official recently said", consider R&T's lead time, and that same Porsche official probably said they were going to take over VW, too.

djcxxx

I believe we can agree that the business model that Porsche used under WW is now obsolete w/ VW as parent. A sensible approach for VW is to play to Porsche's strengths in terms of the brand (public recognition, history, customer demographics), while trying to assess future growth in terms of new markets/customers, and future model offerings that will succeed within both corporate and Porsche specific parameters. This approach would not necessarily be bad for Porsche or Porsche enthusiasts. Whether VW chooses to be sensible is the unknown.