QOTD: Are Car Enthusiasts Ahead of or Behind the Market?
The latest sales numbers from April are a tale of two cars: one with a bodystyle we praise and another sporting a shape we denounce without impunity – the VW Golf SportWagen and Porsche Macan.
The long-roof Golf took nine days on average to find a buyer. The Macan is at 11 days.
Brown manual diesel all-wheel drive wagon it is not, yet the SportWagen does check most of the boxes typically associated with the practical car enthusiast set. You get space without having to pay the drag penalty associated with SUVs and their large frontal area. Also, for those looking for some performance, nothing delivers torque like diesel (unless you go electric, which is a discussion for another day).
Which brings us to the Macan. Granted, the smaller Porsche-UV is exceptionally good, even if you do lose out on a considerable amount of cargo space compared to its platform mate, the Audi Q5. But, the Macan is still the antithesis of typical car enthusiast thinking: a high-riding utility vehicle that can’t go off-road sporting a badge from a “sportscar” company when, in fact, it has virtually nothing in common with the rest of the range. It’s also expensive, equipped horribly on the lower end of the price scale, and about as ‘aspirational’ as one can get.
So, that begs the question: are car enthusiasts ahead of the curve or behind it? Is the Golf SportWagen a case of the rest of the market finally “getting it” or just an odd blip in a typically silver SUV-filled market?
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Neither. Car enthusiast priorities are just different from the mainstream market. They don't so much care about soft touch plastics, cup holders and rear leg room as the experience of driving the car. They are also a minority so let's hope there are enough of us to continue to justify making mainstream performance cars.
The GSW S is not nearly the penalty box you may imagine it to be. Also, it has 16" wheels standard, not 15s.