[woodsman]

I've owned a lot of Japanese vehicles and my first German one has been a real eye opener: half the life-cycle! I think that the Porsche that built our cars was almost broke and learning new ways of operating just to survive much as many low-volume builders of the day were. Another problem is that Porsche seems to want to re-invent every single part with a new design which decreases overall reliability in place of building on past successes.
At the end of the day Porsche (and other luxury German marques) cares most about the buyer's perceived value of their product and their relatively short-term experience of it (2-5 yrs?) versus the overall economy of a longer term of ownership for the more mundane stuff.