You might be surprised that a car guy could run a blog for more than a year without dissing the Porsche Cayenne, their popular but controversial SUV. Well, here it goes.
A lot of people defend it, by pointing out that it allows Porsche to keep up their financially-iffy business of building sports cars. Though fans may not realize just how much the Cayenne props up the company: almost half of all Porsches sold worldwide are Cayennes. As some have sarcastically pointed out, Porsche has become an SUV company that also makes sports cars.
It's sort of like a concept in the auto business known as the "halo car." That's a car model that doesn't necessarily make the company much (or any) money, but is worth producing because it changes people's perception of the brand, because it’s sporty, luxurious, or technologically advanced. The Corvette is probably the best-known example. But Porsche has turned this concept on its head. Instead of using a cool car to make a stable of boring cars more palatable, they make a bunch of cool cars plus a practical car to make money.
What I find odd about the Cayenne is how far it stretches the brand concept. We're all used to the idea of using coolness to sell ordinary products to people who don't need the product’s capabilities. I'm thinking of say, a person who wants to seem athletic, so they buy Nike shoes, which they just use to walk around Wal-Mart. That's silly, but at least there's some sense to it. Those shoes could conceivably be used for sports, and the customer is buying a sporty shoe to associate themselves with sports.
The same concept works in the car biz. There are plenty of sports cars that have never seen a track, and SUVs that never leave asphalt. But with the Cayenne, you're trying to feel sporty by buying a vehicle made to go off road, but was designed by a sports car company. That would be like the aforementioned shoe buyer trying to feel athletic by buying Nike Crocs.
No comments:
Post a Comment