Porsche AG announced that it delivered 256,255 vehicles worldwide in 2018. China was the biggest market, taking 80,108 units: a rise of 12% year on year. European sales fell 4% to 77,216 cars, with Germany taking roughly a third of that total. The single-market USA was behind Europe and substantially lower than China at just 57,000 cars in total.
The record number of total deliveries represents a growth of four per cent compared to the (record) figures for 2017. Panamera recorded the highest percentage growth, up 38% to 38,443 deliveries. The 911 (991) also recorded a double-digit rise: up 10% to 35,573 vehicles. Deliveries of the new car timed to coincide with the start of the year should see a rise for the 911 through 2019.
The 911, Panamera and 718 Boxster/Cayman are obviously small fry in the great scheme of things. Macan alone sold more than both 911 and Panamera combined, at 86,031 units delivered, while Cayenne deliveries totalled 71,458. Macan and Cayenne combined is 157,489 or 61% of total output. All four total 231,505, leaving 24750 units: presumably all Boxster/Cayman.
UK new car sales landscape
The UK new car market fell 6.8% through 2018, to 2.37 million cars in total. Diesel cars continue to decline in percentage down from 42% in 2017 to 31.7% in 2018. This shift was largely attributable to the Volkswagen emissions cheating scandal, which also involved Porsche and Audi models. As diesel sales fall, total CO2 emissions from the UK new car market have now risen for the second year in succession. The shift away from diesel is having a big effect.
“Diesels are, on average, 15-20% more efficient than petrol equivalents and so have a substantial role to play in addressing climate change,” said the UK Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. “The hard won gains made by the sector since CO2 records began in 1997 are being undermined by the shift away from diesel and disappointing growth in alternatively fuelled vehicles. This only underscores the challenge both industry and government face in meeting ambitious climate change targets.”
Porsche’s green credentials under the microscope
“The switch to the new WLTP test cycle and gasoline particle filters in Europe mean that we faced significant challenges in the fourth quarter of 2018, and these will continue to be felt in the first half of 2019,” said Detlev von Platen, Porsche Sales and Marketing chief.
Porsche cancelled all new orders of diesel models during 2018, so we will see how this plays out in deliveries of Macan, Cayenne and Panamera during 2019. The incoming Taycan electric vehicle range later this year will not have a huge effect on the manufacturer’s overall environmental impact, with another production line added and the workforce now twice what it was in 2012.
Getting back into the blog flow for 2019 was not helped by the failure of my much-loved Macbook Pro last week. If you know someone who can pull email folders from an encrypted SSD with a damaged operating system, drop me a line. Apple’s Support team say it can’t be done but a local data recovery place managed to get 300GB of data off the drive this morning. Sadly no email folders as yet, but some clever person must exist who can do this.
Anyway, while I was off-blog waiting for a new Macbook Pro to arrive, we had some notable Porsche sales with lots of interesting data: more of this later. One sale in Phoenix, Arizona set a new world record for the 2010 Porsche 997 Sport Classic, when RM Sotheby’s relieved a lucky buyer of half a million pounds ($654,000) for the privilege of owning a 150-mile example.
Half a million pounds for a Sport Classic will leave a lot of people scratching their heads. Yes it is rare, and this was low mileage, and prices at the first Porsche sales of the year are often a little bit barmy, but that sort of money buys a lot of Porsche alternatives that can be driven. Odds are this purchase was to bolster an already substantial collection.
What is a Sport Classic?
First shown at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show, the Porsche 911 Sport Classic was one of several limited edition models built on the Gen 2 997 platform (Speedster being another). An upgraded 3.8-litre engine with Power Kit equipped the car with over 400 horsepower to offer to the road gods through a six-speed manual transmission. The 250-unit Sport Classic edition also featured Porsche Ceramic Composite Brakes and PASM as standard.
Several styling features set the Sport Classic apart. These included a Double-Dome roof, a ducktail engine cover and that evergreen Sport Classic Grey paint. The wheels were replica Fuchs (cast in a factory in Italy if memory serves). The Fuchs people told me that they were a bit ticked off that genuine forged Fuchs alloy wheels were not part of the recipe for maximum Sport Classic authenticity and that it was all down to price.
I was not that enthralled by the Sport Classic when it first came out and didn’t chase a test drive. The closest I ever got to driving one was in a feature on a replica that myself and Alisdair Cusick were commissioned to write for a 911 magazine sometime in 2010. Built by a Porsche place in Essex, the conversion was based on a well used Gen 1 997 C2, so not the widebody shell that the real one was built around. Thus the Sport Classic wheels (bought from Porsche) did not quite fit the arches properly and the bubble roof was a bit of a challenge. It had the right look side-on from a hundred feet away, but each step closer made it slightly less convincing, until you were standing next to it and looking through the window at tired leather and a Tiptronic shifter.
However wide of the mark that replica was, at least the owner drove it for a few thousand miles, which is more than the owner of the nigh-on brand new Sport Classic sold by RM Sotheby’s did. With just 150 miles on the clock, the car had been stored in California all of its life, so was offered in pristine condition. It sold for $654,000 including premium: a figure which made at least three people very happy. If you were thinking you might fancy a Sport Classic some time, you are probably not one of the three.
Following Andreas Seidl’s departure from Weissach in September 2018, McLaren F1 has announced that the former head of Porsche’s LMP1 programme is the new managing director of its Formula One racing team.
McLaren Racing has appointed Andreas Seidl as managing director of our @F1 team. 🤝
Born on January 6, 1976 on the banks of the Danube in Passau, Lower Bavaria, father-of-two Seidl built his early career with BMW Motorsport. He went on to run the test and operations department at the BMW Sauber Formula One team and later served as Head of Race Operations when BMW left F1 and returned to DTM in 2012. BMW’s DTM team claimed the manufacturer’s title on its first year back.
In 2013, Seidl’s friend and Porsche motorsport boss, Fritz Enzinger, signed him up for Porsche’s LMP1 squad. Coming on board as Director of Race Operations, he was made Team Principal in 2014. The Porsche 919 LMP1 Hybrid claimed the first of its three Le Mans wins the following year.
Co-workers point to Seidl’s love of “what-if” planning as an essential component in his approach: a distaste for snap reactions to the unexpected means he develops strategies to account for all imaginable scenarios before a race wheel is turned. “Andreas is like a chess player,” says Enzinger. “He’s a tactician who runs through every possible move with the team in advance in order to be able to respond in a flash.”
The HR doors were fairly one-way at McLaren F1 last year, with drivers, designers and trackside bosses all saying goodbye by the end of the season. This year, McLaren F1 brings in top designer, James Key, drivers Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris and now an ex-Porsche man, too. Whether Seidl’s management will pull the team together and lift McLaren out of its doldrums remains to be seen, but his track record is unquestionable. Friends of the blog at McLaren F1 are excited to learn how the Bavarian works once his gardening leave expires.
“This is an enormous privilege and challenge, which I am ready for and committed to,” said Andreas. “To have an opportunity to contribute to the McLaren legacy is extremely special and inspiring. McLaren has the vision, leadership and experience but, most importantly, the people to return to the front, and that will be my absolute focus and mission.”
F1 2019 kicks off next month with two four-day tests at Barcelona on February 18 – 21 and Feb 26 – March 1. I have talked little brother into a first test trip, so I hope the weather’s better than last year.
Flat-out racing on ice and snow returns to Zell am See in Austria this month, when the inaugural GP Ice Race is run on January 19th and 20th. A contemporary re-imagining of the spectacular ice races held in the region from 1937 to 1974, the event is the brainchild of Vinzenz Greger and Ferdinand Porsche, great-grandson of Dr Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951).
“For more than forty years, spectacular car races on ice as well as skijoring (skiers towed behind cars) fascinated the people at Zell am See,” notes Ferdinand Porsche. “Even before World War I, there was an ice race for motorbikes on the lake. During the 1950s, the event evolved into what we today think about, when we hear about skijoring.
“The first skijoring competition in remembrance of my great-grandfather Dr. Ferdinand Porsche took place on 10 February 1952. Four years later, the event was renamed “In memoriam Prof. Dr. h.c. Ferdinand Porsche”, now featuring ice races for motorbikes and cars. The event was not won by a Porsche – but by a DKW. In a couple of weeks, we will bring back this legendary event from obscurity, newly interpreted as “GP Ice Race”.”
Porsche celebrities from far and wide will attend the event, but, in keeping with the original ice racing ethos, there is no special treatment for the big names. “There are no VIP tickets for paddocks and boxes only for privileged visitors,” said Ice Race ambassador and motorsport legend, Hans-Joachim Stuck. “At our event, the ticket is also really close to the action and the stars.”
Other big names from racing and rallying include Walter Rörhl, Richard Lietz, Marc Lieb, Romain Dumas, Mark Webber, Timo Bernhard and Jochi Kleint. The two-day program features show rides of celebrity riders, traditional skijoring, where skiers are pulled across the snow by racing cars, the competition of current racing and rally vehicles and demo rides of historic motorsport cars such as Otto Mathé’s original Furhmann-engined “Fetzenflieger”, now owned by the Hamburg Automobile Museum PROTOTYP.
Automobile Museum PROTOTYP founder and director, Oliver Schmidt, will be piloting the Fetzenflieger on the demanding track and is already looking forward to the race: “Otto Mathé won this event four times with his famous monoposto in the 1950s, so of course expectations are high! Whether I can equal the performance of the true “Ice King” will be seen at the show rides on Saturday and Sunday afternoon but either way it will be a lot of fun for everyone!”
Zell am See: GP Ice Race Event Schedule
Saturday January 19 2019
11:00 AM Opening event area
12:00 AM Start of the event
1:00 PM GP Ice Karting, Qualification & Day final runs
4:00 PM Show races & specials
4:30 PM Qualification & Day final runs
8:20 PM Show races & specials
8:50 PM GP Charity Ice Karting, Qualification & Day final runs
10:00PM Pit Lane Night
Sunday January 20 2019
7:30 AM Opening event area
8:30 AM GP Charity Ice Karting, Qualification & Day final runs
15:10 PM Show races & specials
15:40 PM Day final runs, Final runs & Award ceremony
Porsche has unveiled its new Cayman GT4 Clubsport, which features a small amount of natural fibre bodywork. The move is in tune with Stuttgart’s aims to increase the use of sustainable, renewable materials following a 2015 Sustainability Report which showed Porsche had increased its use of fossil fuels and electrical power through the year.
Porsche says that 718 Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport is the first ever production race car to feature body parts made of natural-fibre composite material. Both doors and the rear wing are made of an organic fibre mix, sourced primarily from agricultural by-products such as flax or hemp fibres and feature similar properties to carbon fibre in terms of weight and stiffness.
Three panels on a car doesn’t seem like much, but it’s a start. The technology obviously exists to do more, as demonstrated by Swiss firm BComp, whose partnership with the Electric GT sustainable racing project was announced back in 2017.
Bcomp’s proprietary material is a high-performance, cost-efficient product that can replace or reinforce carbon fibre and other engineering materials. It is said to cut up to 40% weight with no change in performance. The natural fibre composite bodywork developed by Bcomp can also be embedded with LED lighting to act as an information screen while the cars go around the circuit.
Bcomp’s powerRib and ampliTex reinforcement fabrics have been used throughout the sports and leisure markets, in products such as skis, snowboards, surfboards, canoes and guitars. Bcomp has also collaborated with the European Space Agency ESA on the development of lightweight space applications.
Porsche Cayman GT4 Trackday model not available in the UK
The Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport comes in two versions ex-works: the Trackday model and the Competition variant for national and international motor racing. The Trackday edition is not available in the UK.
Costing £130,000 (plus 20% UK VAT), the 718 Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport Competition model weighs 1,320 kilograms and is powered by a 3.8-litre flat six producing 425 bhp. This is 40 bhp more than the previous model, but it didn’t stop Porsche selling 421 examples of that one over the last three years.
The transmission is a six-speed PDK with mechanical rear diff lock. Suspension is from the GT3 Cup and the bias-adjustable brakes are steel discs all round measuring 380mm in diameter. Air jacks and a fire extinguisher system are fitted as standard. The car comes with a 115-litre fuel tank for endurance events and lengthy Nurburgring sessions.
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