My RGruppe buddy Thorsten, bona-fide Porsche designer, is part of the 80-strong Porsche team working under Michael Mauer that has just won Germany’s prestigious ‘red dot’ design award.
The award comes in recognition for work on the new 911. The car has already won the product award for ‘best design 2012’: both gongs will be handed over at Essen’s Aalto Theatre tonight.
“Winning both of these awards this year makes us proud,” said Mauer. “It means we pursue the right design philosophy. The quality of our design is founded on our brand values: tradition and innovation, sportiness and suitability for everyday driving. This unique combination and the conviction that good design has to be honest, functional and timeless constitute the foundation of our characteristic Porsche design language.”
I think Mauer is right on the money but am most thrilled by knowing Thorsten. Well done mate! Also well done to all of your talented colleagues.
Edit: SoCal Chaptermeister Ray Crawford just gave me the heads up on two Honorary Gruppers in the design team: Tony Hatter, No. 993 and Grant Larson No. 986. Nice!
American consumer research giant, JD Power, has given top marks to the new 911 in its latest “Initial Quality Study”. The research is carried out three months into ownership, when the halo has not yet worn off and the car is clocking up beauty miles.
Porsche reports that 230 2012 model year cars were sampled, with 228 questions addressing all aspects of customer satisfaction. The new 911 took top spot in the luxury sports car category, as well as recording the lowest number of complaints in the entire survey.
It’s hard not to wonder about these surveys. After three months, you are still getting oohs and ahs from friends and colleagues, and most buyers have barely reached first-service mileage. How likely would buyers of new Porsche sports cars be to record extreme disappointment after 12 weeks of ownership? Thumbs down would hardly be a good reflection on their own ability to spend 70 grand wisely. What might they say – “bit boring, no one lets me in in traffic, sat nav seems expensive for what it actually does?” Maybe that last one was covered in the questions.
More important to new and used car buyers is how the car stands up to 12 months of use, then 24 months and 36 months. Hard to imagine 100% of 996 and early 997 buyers giving gold medals to Porsche after 24 months.
I recently spoke to a guy whose 997 needed an engine rebuild at 25,000 miles, is now up to 28,000 miles total and needs another engine. He is not taking his 911 back to the supposed specialist putting a lot of tuppences into this 53-page thread on Porsche 996 and 997 engine failures. As for my recent education on cracked 997 suspension springs – seems that is no small issue either.
Gen 2 997 seems to be holding up well (better), but always interested to keep track of emerging issues and reliability trends. Hopefully 991 can continue the Gen 2’s good work: let’s see another JD Power report on the same cars this time next year.
I’ve been watching a lot of racing lately. Not just Nurburgring 24, VLN, Porsche Supercup and Carrera Cup, but Blancpain Endurance and the ALMS series.
Blancpain from Silverstone on Motors TV the other night was interesting. In the wet, the little old 911 GT3 RS racecars were setting respectable times versus the latest McLarens and Mercedes SLS.
It made me wonder: how fast is the GT3 RS road car (sweet GT3 pic above) on a dry, twisty circuit versus the McLaren MP4-12C? Thankfully, my former clients at Autocar magazine have provided the answer in video.
It’s tempting to dismiss a review that starts: “venerable” Porsche 911 versus “dizzying” new McLaren. But this is Steve Sutcliffe, who has more than a clue. The results might surprise you, especially when considering the respective purchase prices: £193,000 approx for the McLaren.
What’s the biggest building project in the history of Porsche? Stuttgart central? The Porsche Museum? The Weissach test facility? Wrong, wrong, wrong. The answer is the line for new Macan at Porsche’s Leipzig plant. Says Porsche:
Leipzig is gearing up for production of the new Porsche Macan. For more than seven months, architects and building experts have been working flat out on expanding the production site. It is the biggest building project in the history of Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, Stuttgart, which is investing a total of 500 million euro in the construction of a body assembly line and a paint shop.
Home of Cayenne and Panamera, Leipzig was recently showcased on the Porsche stand at AMI Lepizig. Porsche promoted “interesting details on every facet of car manufacturing and the visitor experience programmes, as well as the latest job offers and information on the plant expansion”.
Once Leipzig’s new paint shop and body assembly line for production of the Macan go live, Porsche expects 1,000 new jobs to be created in the medium term. If you’ve got a CV to send them, wake up and do it.
Everything pre-release these days is a spy video, spy shots, exclusive pictures, blah blah. The way viral marketing works, you know manufacturers are behind the vast majority of it.
Here’s a pair of videos of much disguised new Cayman and Panamera spotted in traffic in Stuttgart. A tranche of videos shot at the same traffic lights shouts manufacturer to me, but whatever. New Cayman first:
Cayman is heavily masked, but you do get some engine noise and a hint of stop-start technology. Also following a 991 Cabriolet: maybe in convoy.
Ferdinand is all for midnight excursions in camouflaged test cars. Porsche black ops are go! Those mega masked headlights would be interesting on a late night charge – maybe that’s what the 991 is for…
The other video is the next Panamera: odd back end and will be interesting to see what the real deal looks like. Expect Boxster-style teardrop headlights on both. Platform sharing R us.
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