#Porsche

Looking at this picture, carefully digitally massaged by my brother, it’s a bit hard to recall why I didn’t dig the 991. What a rich, full colour, shimmering and gleaming like the dowry bangles of an upper-caste Indian bride; love among the marigolds.

Trust me, in person this thing looked like a flicked booger. Put it another way: if the canary turns this colour, get the hell out of the mineshaft. But then, that’s just my opinion – and it sets me to wondering. As we writers are wont to praise or condemn based on the emotional intangibles of a car, how much of the review was due to the hue?

As if the absurdly hyperbolic headline “ The day the world changed” wasn’t enough of a tip-off , the hype machine for the Toyobaru twins has officially reached its zenith, with Wheels magazine’s Peter Robinson declaring the Japanese-spec Toyota 86 to be superior to the Porsche Cayman.

Porsche’s soon-to-be 100 percent owner Volkswagen is making money hand over fist. At the same time, the German tax payer is contributing 43.67 million euros to the expansion of Porsche’s plant in Leipzig, Germany, where the new Macan will be made starting in 2014. This has attracted the attention of EU competition regulators.

They have been together for a while. Behemoth Volkswagen and tiny, but bigger than life Porsche shared technologies and booths at auto shows, Volkswagen generals are in key positions at Porsche. Fitting the German Zeitgeist, they lived together without being formally married. This will be rectified in a few weeks.

Imagine it’s 1998 and you’re the successful CEO of a company that makes, oh I don’t know, jewel cases for CDs. Business is booming and your four-year-old 911 Carrera coupe isn’t quite the paradigm you want to project. You’re moving with the times, and there’s a new, modern 911 coming.

Keys in hand, you walk into your local Por-shuh dealership and… what the hell is that thing?

Flash forward to 2012 and your company now makes an app of some variety: iPaintswatch or some such nonsense. You’re minting money at $0.99-per-download, and your ’08 silver-on-black C2S is due for replacement – your business partner just bought himself an R8, and you simply must have LED running lights to keep up appearances.

You head back to that same dealership – which is now equipped with a cappuccino machine – squeeze past four Cayennes and three Panameras and feast your eyes on the newest 911…

Does the new 991 need more power? After all, in addition to the inevitable (and mandatory) color-mag fellatio you’d expect, it’s already impressed Brendan McAleer at a Porsche-operated press event and squeaked out a narrow victory over a Mustang GT in an impromptu challenge at Summit Point’s Shenandoah course.

In the days when Porsche was a manufacturer of sports cars, rather than a purveyor of two-ton plasti-metallic pig-mobiles doing the occasional sporting car for purposes of brand enhancement, its policy of continuous improvement meant that each year’s 911 was better than the last. Nowadays, however, the company sets out its marketing objectives and molds the product to suit.

Witness: the new 991 Powerkit.

Five years ago, former and now disgraced Porsche chief Wendelin Wiedeking started the Porsche SE. It was a holding company, destined to hold the shares of Volkswagen after a successful takeover. Porsche cars are made by Porsche AG. The takeover never happened. Volkswagen bought nearly 50 percent of Porsche AG, and wants the rest ASAP. What will become of Porsche SE?

If the shareholders agree – and the shareholder meeting is today – Porsche SE will become a trading house, selling rare earths, building solar farms, and offering car sharing services, Germany’s ARD says.

After several hours of slinging a 991 Carrera S around the track (review to follow), I can’t say I was particularly looking forward to relinquishing the keys to the Porker for the keys to the, uh, porker. I was here to drive both cars, and I’d already had plenty of up-close views of the Pano through the windscreen of the 911 as it clogged up turn 3, seeming to flop over on its flank like the wounded Bismark.

Back of the pack out on the grid, I waved several 911s and a heavily-modified Evo ahead out of politeness, not wishing to be the clot in this small, fast group of experienced drivers (with one notable exception). Nice and easy through turn one and two, squeezing on the throttle a bit through the back straight, with an eye to unforgiving concrete barriers and a thought to the coldness of the tires and the track.

Over the hump at turn two, swing wide out to the right and squeeze on the power as I straighten out the wheel, and suddenly I’m thinking: well that’s not right.

Not right at all….

For all intents and purposes, Porsche is part of Volkswagen. Except for one niggling detail: Officially, Porsche still owns Volkswagen, and not Volkswagen Porsche. See complicated graph. Volkswagen had planned to swallow Porsche whole, and to add it to Volkswagen’s large collection of brands, but there were some nasty details. The most worrisome detail is solved: The tax bill.

And my reviews is unbelivable like flying saucers

/no more iron horses cuz I’m drivin Porsches

With apologies to Lamont “Big L” Coleman, but I’ve been waiting to use the hackneyed version of his famous punchline for some time. The only problem is that TTAC and Porsche are frenemies at best, adversaries at worst, ever since one of our resident Porsche owners said unkind things about the Panamera.

In the summer of 1989, I was ten going on eleven. The fastest car I had yet ridden in was probably my dad’s 535i, clocked by the CHiP at well over the tonne, a ticket which the patriarch of the family talked himself out of with a “Not bad, right?”

It was hard to say if I really cared about cars yet: obviously they were important to my dad, and I’d already learned to drive our Series III Land Rover at walking pace on the banks of the Fraser River, but there were new Pirate sets coming from Lego, and G.I. Joe had just released a barely-disguised SR-71 Blackbird for the Cobra forces. Sean Connery had joined Harrison Ford in a quest for the Holy Grail. A friend had just gotten the new, side-scrolling Zelda Game.

The world was full of simple distractions for a young man: Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, E.T. and Ewoks, Yop bottles filled with vinegar and baking soda, Thundercats and Space Quest III.

Then, one day, in the basement of a Ladysmith home, I climbed behind the wheel of a 16-bit Porsche 959 and the whole world changed. I was exposed to the founding tenet of automotive enthusiasm.

What? The supercar? Don’t be daft, I’m talking about arguing.

You would have to travel far to shoot (bad boy as you are) a Bali tiger. Germany’s Auto, Motor und Sport Magazin did not have to travel further than the Golfanlage Schloss Nippenburg to shoot themselves a Macan. Macan is Indonesian for tiger, better known as the name for Porsche’s upcoming SUVlet.

The tempo of Porsche’s global growth slowed to 7.2 percent in April on sales of 12,588 units. This is down from the 12.6 percent gain the folks from Zuffenhausen racked up from January to April. “What do you expect, European malaise,” is the knee-jerk reaction.

The surprising malaise is elsewhere, further east, much further east.

Good news for armchair brand strategists: Porsche’s race to the bottom (of the price range) has been cancelled. There will be no entry-level roadster below the Boxster, Porsche CEO Matthias Müller told the Stuttgarter Zeitung today. It’s not that there won’t be lots of new customers for the bargain-Porsche. Current customers don’t want their brand to be devalued and debased, Müller says.

TTAC Commentator PartsUnknown writes:

Sajeev,

Long story short, a family friend has an ’86 944 non-turbo sitting in her driveway in suburban Massachusetts. It belongs to her son who lives in Manhattan. Although he loves the car, it simply does not fit his current lifestyle. He wants to sell it, but is not actively pursuing it. His mother is constantly suggesting that I buy it (she knows my predilection for cars). Here’s the deal: it’s been sitting for a few years, driven sparingly. It appears to be in good cosmetic condition and it apparently runs. I know these cars are expensive to maintain.

I’m a busy man, with a wife and two young kids, a demanding career and a Saab 9-5 that I like to tinker with to satisfy my inner mechanic. I value time with my family above all, and while focusing on saving for retirement and college tuition, probably couldn’t afford to dump massive amounts of money into this car. The only reason I’m even considering it is that this guy’s mother has hinted that he just wants to get rid of it, and she said laughing, “he’d probably take $1,000 for it”. Question is, should I even entertain the idea? What, at minimum, would it cost to get this thing roadworthy as a weekend ride considering its relative lack of use (keeping in mind I’m a middling DIYer)? I’m leaning no, but $1,000 for a decent 944 seems like a no-brainer. Almost. I previously owned a 1986 911 Carrera Coupe, which was a fantastic car, but I sold it for precisely the reasons stated above – to prioritize time with my family over spending a Saturday replacing blower motors and ball joints.

Talk me off the ledge.