On Saturday, a good friend popped round with his new car - a Cayenne S from Porsche Centre Swindon.
Being a driver of an older Porsche, an enthusuastic fan of Porsche's racing heritage, a regular at le Mans every year since 1997, and a massive fan of Porsche since growing up in Germany - in the past I always wondered why Porsche would consider stopping racing car development in favour of building SUV's.
I know all the financial in's and out's and the need to sell a lot more cars in the massive USA market - I avidly read all the politics and discussion as the Cayenne was developed and later launched. But I never really came to term's with the fact (in my mind) that they'd deserted their true heritage and loyal fanbase.
Anyway, just to say that a 1/2 hour drive in his new Cayenne has turned my opinion around. Only Porsche could move into a totally alien market (for them) by building large 4x4's after years and years of building smaller sports cars - and end up with such a fantastic end product.
I'm still grinning! Well done once again Porsche.
... now if they could get back to the race track and guarantee we're all still grinning in years to come we'd all be very happy.
Rich Claridge
Team Gulp Racing
Being a driver of an older Porsche, an enthusuastic fan of Porsche's racing heritage, a regular at le Mans every year since 1997, and a massive fan of Porsche since growing up in Germany - in the past I always wondered why Porsche would consider stopping racing car development in favour of building SUV's.
I know all the financial in's and out's and the need to sell a lot more cars in the massive USA market - I avidly read all the politics and discussion as the Cayenne was developed and later launched. But I never really came to term's with the fact (in my mind) that they'd deserted their true heritage and loyal fanbase.
Anyway, just to say that a 1/2 hour drive in his new Cayenne has turned my opinion around. Only Porsche could move into a totally alien market (for them) by building large 4x4's after years and years of building smaller sports cars - and end up with such a fantastic end product.
I'm still grinning! Well done once again Porsche.
... now if they could get back to the race track and guarantee we're all still grinning in years to come we'd all be very happy.
Rich Claridge
Team Gulp Racing
