I didn't want to believe this but I see it .

One car. one engine --eliminates all of this two tier competition between this closely related pair --making it one car .. priced more current for todays economy and competitive market.

 

Interesting point. It sheds light on both sides of the coin .That's why i feel pricing would be so crucial to the one engine concept. It woild have to be less than the current "S" but close enough to the base to "jump on the bandwagon" . That's why evaluating the discounts is so important.

 

yrralis1,
You said earlier in this thread that Porsche should build just one car that's the best, well that would be the GT3 or GT2. You dismiss these as track cars, but isn't that really the definition of the 'best' Porsche, a track car that's street legal.
If Porsche streamlines the model choices, it doesn't solve the problem you're seeing. They would still produce the same amount of cars. It comes down to supply, not model choices. In this day and age, as with any product, comsumers want as many choices as possible. Why does Baskin- Robbins offer 31 flavors of ice cream? With your thinking, they would just offer vanilla and chocolate?
In the end, it comes down to Porsche providing profits to their owners and share-holders. So if that means they offer 14 models or 1, they will still build as many cars and sell them for what the market will pay to get those profits.
BTW, what do you think if that one engine were a 3.7L with 365hp?

 

"Best" meaning per category.
The 997 and 997S are normally aspirated street cars.
They differ from the Gt cars . They differ from the Turbo cars.
Since this is the 997 folder the other cars come up in discussion and I have said this about the Turbo . I do feel a Turbo S should have been the refreshed car --but that is a different market and a different car.

 

Larry: I do not see your point on this thread. You begin saying that the Carrera does not make sense and end up saying that the S is a minor upgrade. I disagree on both points. The Carrera is an excellent 911 in its own right but the S is in it's own league (at least in the 997.2 gen). Those who mostly drive freeways may think both cars are close, but that is far from the truth. You need to drive mountain roads or a track to see the difference.

 

its like at my friends neighborhood, 10-12 430's.... and then a guy goes and buys a scudaria and now he trumps the rest of the 430 guys... if everyone had LP640's then the guy who gets the LP670 has the bigger ____. the company's aren't dumb... they know they can add $ and someone will buy it... same reason why they release the V8 panamera first, so the guys that must have em buy the expensive model and then once the sales start to decline, they release the v6 models for the people that love the car but dont want to spend the v8 money.

 

I get the sense that you are proposing what you would like to see, but it has no relation to what businesses can accomplish. You have it backward you see. The diversity of the product line reduces the price we pay for each model. It does not increase it. The consumer does not pay for the other models available that he chooses not to buy. On the contrary, those models pay the freight for the low price he pays on his choice.

If you dropped the alternatives, then that single best car wouldn't be priced lower than the current S. It would be several times as expensive. I won't get into the business school jargon, but up to a point, determinable by analysis, broadening the product line increases the total volume faster than it increases production costs. That reduces the cost of every item offered. I doubt that a single-model 911 could be produced at all. The company would go out of business. We owned and loved an NSX for a decade, chuckling that we paid half what it cost the factory to build, but that happened because the chairman of one of the largest car companies in the world made it a point of national pride to build that car you describe: "The very best we can." Mostly Honda wanted to show that Japan could build a better car than anything in Europe. You can afford a "loss leader" like that (to use a very old and outdated term) if you have a few hundred billion sloshing around in your R&D fund. Porsche cannot. And if they could, what would it 'lead'? By the approach you suggest, they would have no other product to take advantage of customers drawn to the showroom but finding a lesser car more acceptable. They have no high-volume, low-cost product line to absorb the cost of a one-model Porsche line as an advertising expense.

Besides all that, you keep insisting the base Carrera and the Carrera S are essentially the same car while they are not. You also insist the prices are very close, yet they are not. I sometimes say that the difference between an S and a base Carrera will never matter to the average Porsche driver, because the performance of both is so high as to be beyond their driving skill. But it is a very real difference and it certainly matters to very many people. Like ADias, I was one of them.

The difference in selling price between them is at least half the price of a high-volume consumer car even in this distorted market. That surely seems inconsequential if you're willing to pay a couple of hundred for a car, and yes, we know you can spend that much on a single option for many cars. (Come to think of it, one option for the Porsche is damn near that much itself.) Yes to all that, if -- if -- a quarter million is entertainment change. But the car market is not made up of people willing to spend 200k plus on transportation. And even those of us who can don't often see the time we can devote to our toys being worth the price differential to get "the best car Porsche can build." As I think someone already observed, by that approach, the high end sports car market would have nothing offered but McLaren F-1's and Bugatti Veyrons.

What Porsche offers us is damn well engineered cars with a range of options that let us, with our diverse taste and expectations in fine cars, find the Porsche we'll love at a price we'll accept. And all this from a low volume manufacturer. I'm not sure I see what there is to complain of in that.

Gary, who taught in a graduate school of business for his sins,
and remembers the Porsches of his young married days being
chock-a-block with "technology gadgets" though we thought
of that as spage-age engineering excellence in the sixties

 

I never said either of thse two things.
1) I said the S no longer makes sense in this current market.
2) I never claimed it was either a major or "minor" upgrade.

 

Well, the marketplace judges sense. Nothing else. Two thirds of the sales being the S model says it makes sense. And one third being the base Carrera says that makes sense too.

Gary

 

Disagree - What is your basis to claim that creating multiple engines bears no additional cost and that it doesn't trickle onto the consumer ?

I am not saying it "would be" . I am saying it should be.
So are the consumers who are paying 10 -20 percent off on a car.

I am also not saying a single model 911 . I did NOT say discontinue the Gt3 , Gt2, Turbo . I didn't say discontinue cabs or AWD.

They did discontinue Tiptronic 997 cars so I am not seeing this (paraphrasing) "lets offer diversity" -- outcry to bring it back.

 

My point is that I see a changing market . Sales are lower again this month than last year . I see piles of 997 base cars unsold and 997S cars with pricetags that make many gulp. Despite this .. the S repeatedly outsells the base.

Most have accepted a limited production to meet the demands of a changing market . I simply toss the idea of limiting production by discontinuing the base and S concept - and I also propose the idea of pricing the one engine (rather than two) adequately.

 

Disagreement is always your prerogative. My basis... a lot of years of school and forty years relevant experience? If you're asking for a justification, I haven't time. And I doubt many people want an engineering seminar. We're here to talk about our cars.

"Having opinions is a private joy of us all. Arranging to exhibit them publicly and be paid requires more attention to detail."

Gary

 

There is a difference between making a claim as fact vs opinion.
I am stating mine as opinion . I am using facts to formulate that opinion.

When you say "If you dropped the alternatives, then that single best car wouldn't be priced lower than the current S. It would be several times as expensive"

This is stated as fact.

 

It is.

Gary

 

Yet the sales numbers are lower.

My theory -
One car priced too high.
The other not offering as much -- and also priced high.

Both were met with incentives --last year and this year.

Some offered challenging reasons --
Verdes idea makes sense -- a "built for you" mass appeal .
Gray 911 made sense - (parphrasing) -just enough to jump on the bandwagon .

Either way both are being made .
So will the Turbo and Turbo S .

I suppose there's more of a fan base to the concept of these two cars than I imagined.