Quote:
Originally Posted by thstone
Porsche being owned by VW;
The mostly good: - Easy access to modern manufacturing tools, processes, equipment, and facilities.
- Easy access to engineering tools, processes, equipment, and facilities
- Financial resources to fund lots and lots of new models
- Financial resources to weather severe economic downturns
- Financial resources to fund halo vehicles/projects that may not payback on their own (918??)
- Financial resources to take risks and not jeopardize the viability of the company
- Increase in engineering resources to support other VAG projects
The maybe not so good; - VW now runs the Porsche show - Porsche must do what the VW Board says to do.
- VW Board may make poor decisions regarding sports cars since they are not a sports car company
- VW Board may not be willing to take any chances/risks since they do not share Porsche's history
- VW Board may siphon off top Porsche engineering talent to other brands
- Porsche engineers not happy/may leave company if forced to work on VW projects (imagine being an engineer who was finally hired by Porsche.... and then being assigned to the new Jetta project)
- VG-wide shared platform engineering (Q5 is the basis for the Maccan)
- VG parts bin engineering (why design a new Porsche part when we have existing VW or Audi parts?)
- Financial resources to develop non-sports car models (brand dilution)
- Potential loss of exclusivity
- Potential loss of brand value
- Additional costs of intra-corporation duplicity (Audi's racing against Porsche's)
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Tom hit the nail on the head IMO with the Bold quotes above. The aura of what was once Porsche is likely gone forever. Don't get me wrong, VW will likely exercise it's presence and produce one helluva 911 / Boxster, but please refer to the video I posted above, it will never be an "Authentic" Porsche as Ferdinand would have envisioned.