Are Spyders Becoming Extinct At OPCs!
- Thread starter daro911
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PORSCHE SAYS KERCHING How rampant up-selling by dealers underpins Porsche's staggering bottom-line performance Porsche is famously known as the world’s most profitable car company, but recent figures released by the company show exactly how profitable: in the first three months of this year it made £13,061 for every car it sold. By contrast, BMW makes about £3,500, according to the Economist. VW must be very happy. Porsche sales of 37,000 were just two per cent of the overall VW group’s total for those three months, but it made an amazing quarter of the profit, netting 573m euros (£484m). Porsche was in big trouble back in the 90sSo how on earth does it make so much cash? First we approached Porsche in the UK, the brand’s fourth biggest market. But despite starting with an easy underarm question – ‘what is the secret to your profitability?’ – we got nothing back. Fair enough, a girl wants to keep a few secrets to herself. So we spoke to PHers who’d recently bought a new Porsche. Lessons learnt Of course the company hasn’t always had it this good. “In the middle of the 1990s Porsche was in a threatening crisis,†head of sales Bernhard Maier told an industry conference that PistonHeads attended last year. “The products no longer fitted to the customer demands. The production and other areas of the company were inefficient,†he said. Cayenne aided the return to profitabilityThe next bit you know. Porsche broadened its range with the Boxster in 1996, followed by the ballsier Cayenne SUV in 2002. The company learnt how to build less wastefully with help from the masters: Toyota. As Maier put it, “Storage racks were cut down with motor saws and every process was checked.†Instead of having components and panels lying around, everything was now built when the customer ordered the car. It all went pear-shaped in 2007-2009, when the company got infected by the same financial madness as the banking industry and tried to swallow the VW Group whole. But despite losing its independence to VW in the whole messy process, the fundamentals were still there and between 1994 and 2011 Porsche increased its turnover from 1bn euros to 10bn. But the sports car market is famously tough – passion among enthusiasts isn’t always translated into sales, as any Lotus thread on here will tell you. OPCs are one of many "touch points"Touchy feely Unless you’ve bought or serviced a car at an Official Porsche Centre (OPC) you won’t know how hard the company has worked on cajoling its customers into parting with their cash. Like the Kraken’s tentacles, Porsche’s “customer touch points†are hard to escape for potential buyers or existing customers. Sales boss Maier boasted that Porsche had 120 of these contact points, ranging from going into a service to receiving a customer magazine. “Our customers should be handled so smoothly that they don’t even feel a process,†he said. PHer David Taylor from York experienced this first hand. “I used to have a secondhand 996 GT3 and about 30 months ago I was cold-called by my local Porsche dealer to see if I wanted to buy a very nearly new 997.2 GT3 RS,†he tells us. Understandably he baulked at the cost. “This was a very big jump financially from a £40K 996 and having pondered long and hard I decided to say no.†Customer service is "seamless" in hereBut Porsche didn’t give up. “A couple of weeks later I got another cold call asking if I would be interested in ordering a new one as a build slot had come free. The combination of scarcity and the earlier price conditioning led me to saying yes in about two seconds.†Temptation In the showroom, the headlong rush towards the dotted line is even harder to resist. PHer and first time Porsche buyer Jim Gabriel discovered this when he bought his 991Carrera in February. “From the receptionist to salesman to business manager it all appeared seamless; they all remembered who I was, what I drove, and what I do for a living.†His car was in stock and ever-present. “I was impressed that when you were knee-deep in negotiation, the car, that object of desire, was parked just in my eyeline.†Jim’s 991 came pre-specced, but he admired the “well-judged†test route for highlighting the attractions of certain options. “When the sports exhaust needed a demo we were in a village, surrounded by high walls which perfectly amplified the sound,†Jim tells us. David, meanwhile, specced his new GT3 to £122,000 from a base price of £106,000. "Well-judged" test route helps matters, tooYou’re not even safe after the handshake. The Porsche Experience Centre at Silverstone has its own option showroom area where buyers who’ve put a deposit on a new car and have claimed their free half-day thrash-about can add any extras they realised they should have specced, following the morning’s drive in the well-optioned demo cars. Other “touch points†Porsche owners will be familiar with include the OPC writing to them asking whether they want to trade in their old car for a new model, ostensibly because they’re short on used stock. Keeping it up Of course, you’re not going to come to the brand if your new car plummets in value, and Porsche’s impressive residuals are achieved partly because of the exclusivity, building “one car fewer than the market is able to handle†according to Maier. "Upgrade, sir?" It's hard to resist...But that exclusivity could be threatened by the current push to sell 200,000 cars a year globally by 2018. Last year Porsche hit sales of 141,000, a huge jump from 119,000 in 2011. Of those, 8,000 were in the UK, up from 6,400 the year before. Next year’s smaller Macan SUV will almost certainly bridge the remaining gap, and it could outsell the Cayenne, now Porsche’s best-selling car globally and in the UK. Whatever you think of that car and Porsche’s SUV strategy it doesn’t seem to have harmed the brand appeal. That’s what brings buyers into the showroom, where the real pressure is applied to spend more than they really ought. Says PHer Jim, “I could bang on about the experience for hours, but I would sum it up as ‘slick’.â€
Great picture flat6 always tickles me seeing more 981's in one shot than total UK Spyder numbers[
] Talking of numbers and SpIders I prefer the Italian method - SMALL[] Ferrari will never build cars outside of its core sports car and GT market, chairman Luca di Montezemolo has declared. Speculation has linked Ferrari to future projects building an SUV, a four-door car or a smaller, cheaper car, but di Montezemolo said none of these would fit the brand. “Our emphasis is on our heritage and expertise,†said Montezemolo. “We will manufacturer new models in the future, but the market position of them will always begin with where we stand with relation to our history.†Montezemolo highlighted that sister brand [link=http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-reviews/maserati]Maserati[/link] was moving into the four-door market with the [link=http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/shanghai-auto-show/maserati-ghibli-shanghai-motor-show-2013]Ghibli[/link] and would launch an SUV in the near future. “People ask me if my insistence on selling n[link=http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/ferrari-wants-fewer-sales-higher-profits]o more than 7000 Ferraris[/link] will harm our brand, but I don’t believe so,†said Montezemolo. “They also ask me about a four-door car or SUV, and I point them in the direction of Maserati.†Asked if he feared the widespread success of [link=http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-reviews/porsche]Porsche[/link] in the sports car market and its move back to the hypercar market with this year’s [link=http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/porsche-previews-918-spyder-customers]918 Spyder[/link], Montezemolo added: “Everyone respects Porsche – it is the most important brand in sports cars after Ferrari. But over the past 20 years, when anyone has tried to penetrate our segment, I have welcomed it.†Montezemolo also reiterated that Ferrari would never build a pure electric car while he is at the helm of the company.
] Talking of numbers and SpIders I prefer the Italian method - SMALL[] Ferrari will never build cars outside of its core sports car and GT market, chairman Luca di Montezemolo has declared. Speculation has linked Ferrari to future projects building an SUV, a four-door car or a smaller, cheaper car, but di Montezemolo said none of these would fit the brand. “Our emphasis is on our heritage and expertise,†said Montezemolo. “We will manufacturer new models in the future, but the market position of them will always begin with where we stand with relation to our history.†Montezemolo highlighted that sister brand [link=http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-reviews/maserati]Maserati[/link] was moving into the four-door market with the [link=http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/shanghai-auto-show/maserati-ghibli-shanghai-motor-show-2013]Ghibli[/link] and would launch an SUV in the near future. “People ask me if my insistence on selling n[link=http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/ferrari-wants-fewer-sales-higher-profits]o more than 7000 Ferraris[/link] will harm our brand, but I don’t believe so,†said Montezemolo. “They also ask me about a four-door car or SUV, and I point them in the direction of Maserati.†Asked if he feared the widespread success of [link=http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-reviews/porsche]Porsche[/link] in the sports car market and its move back to the hypercar market with this year’s [link=http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/porsche-previews-918-spyder-customers]918 Spyder[/link], Montezemolo added: “Everyone respects Porsche – it is the most important brand in sports cars after Ferrari. But over the past 20 years, when anyone has tried to penetrate our segment, I have welcomed it.†Montezemolo also reiterated that Ferrari would never build a pure electric car while he is at the helm of the company.Another good find daro. No doubt Ferrari work up a healthy profit margin like Porsche, with a shrewdly priced options list, like Porsche. They also have Maserati through which they can maximise their return on their expertise and developments through bi-products into the next tier down that Maserati occupies. I think the FF is as far Ferrari will go. Trying to make a Ferrari daily driver just seemed a bit odd to me, with its all wheel drive and shooting brake profile for load lugging capacity. Don't get me wrong, i'm a fan of all wheel drive but Ferrari said "Drive it - anywhere, any time, in any weather or road conditions – and you’ll know why it’s so radical. It may be a car that has elegance, beauty and art in its soul, but there’s much, much more to the FF than sophisticated allure. It was, in fact, designed specifically to tackle the toughest, most complex and ambitious of driving challenges. The kind of challenges that the most uncompromising and discerning drivers will want to set it. Drivers that demand their cars give of their all. Effortlessly. Regardless of weather or surface. The FF will more than match anything that’s asked of it because it is quite simply the most versatile car ever produced by the pens, computers, wrenches and milling machines used by the Prancing Horse technicians, engineers, designers and mechanics." "It has it all: exceptional, class-topping performance that pushes its signature Ferrari thoroughbred DNA and driving pleasure to the utmost, regardless of weather or terrain. Even on snow, ice and dirt." "It’s as much a car for day-to-day driving as it is for extraordinarily unique occasions." Hats off to them if it has sold well. Just thinking that Ferrari owners will typically have other cars for other duties and don't need their Ferrari to be practical and 'all seasons'. I suppose some may want more than one Ferrari, one for each purpose. Just like i'd like to have 2 Porsches[8|] I'm not sure about the FF yet.
Too harsh? http://revistadelmotor.es/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/allegro-19015.jpg
I take it you guys wouldn't spend £227K on an FF either. It seems a bit of a misfit. Here is Autocar's summary: Should I buy one? We’d be jealous if you did. The FF’s massive price tag (£275,827 with options in this case) puts it in the upper echelons of motoring excess, well beyond the normal means of anyone familiar with personal loans and PAYE paychecks. Overall it well deserves its place in such rarefied air; the model is not fanboy poster fodder, but it’s a hypercar carrier of four unrivaled in ethos or execution.

 Whether the theme of that particular concept appeals to you personally is another matter. For some the FF may be too big, too heavy (1880kg), and with its four-wheel-drive safety catch, even too conservative to offer a proper Ferrari fix. Others may find it too noisy and punishingly raw for high-end grand touring. But for those in-between, those willing to compromise slightly at either end and also not yield to inclement weather, the FF could be the compelling purchase of a lifetime. If I had the money [] I wouldn't buy one unless it was my 4th Ferrari alongside a F12 Berlinetta, a 458 and a California (yes, bonkers) and even then, i'd rather wait to see if they produce an alternative 2+2. I'm not convinced Ferrari aren't contradicting themselves with the FF and what they've said they will and won't do within their core products whilst leaving the deviations to Maserati. Anyway, some pics to link back from Ferrari to our Spyder[] 
mmm... not convinced. In the rain it looked like me and flat6 going round the Evo Triangle the other weekend [] For the budget you could have a Spyder, a new Range Rover and a 430 and some very good holidays. But then, it's not aimed at me and I can't afford it.
] For the budget you could have a Spyder, a new Range Rover and a 430 and some very good holidays. But then, it's not aimed at me and I can't afford it.Just finished reading your article at the bottom of page 132. Good points - the Italian cars have flair, and even the P1, which looks a bit to Sci-Fi for me, has presence. The mechanical innovations on the 918 are no doubt superb but in the hypercar world, is that enough. Doesn't sound like it if they don't have 918 orders by this late stage. Will take more than Guards Red paint to spruce it up, and showing the early test vehicle won't have helped to excite people (you wouldn't get to see the La Ferrari undressed or wearing panels from other cars).ORIGINAL: daro911
Agree - when it comes to serious supercars Ferrari are in a class of their own when compared to Porsche's past efforts[/color]
The look of the 959 hasn't aged gracefully at all IMO Carrera GT was a much better effort but again still no Ferrari to look at When you buy a limited edition Ferrari you are pretty much guaranteed a great car and safe financial investment. However if you buy another brand Supercar like:- Aston Martin Bugatti Lamborghini McLaren Pagani Porsche It is a completely different story from a future financial investment angle and often not a pretty one[ORIGINAL: flat6Is it too late for them to enhance the look? I liked the look of the Carrera GT, even though it is still quite conservative. The look of the 959 didn't excite me. I like the 918 look in a Porsche way, but then it's not me buying it for £672K. Maybe it's for those who only buy Porsche regardless of what the hypercar competition has on offer, but then, why aren't the orders coming?
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