It’s a little Porsche!

Earlier this year, very much tongue in cheek, I wrote about Porsche’s impending takeover of VW. I mused on what that might mean for the Porsche line-up and, although I was quite serious about some of the possibilities, the one I mentioned that seemed least likely was a Golf-sized Porsche. How wrong can you be!

Autobild reported recently on exactly the same story, and Paultan.org covered the story, together with a very interesting image (see left). Now I have to confess that that is a fair bit more sophisticated than the ‘Golf with a Porsche Badge’ I threw up, but it seems the plans are for real. Why, I hear you ask? Simple – economics.

In the US, there is something called CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy). Basically CAFE requires manufacturers to achieve certain economies across their entire range. Now the formulae that is used to calculate the economy is based on a combination of wheelbase and engine size. So a company like Porsche, which manufactures a lot of cars with small wheelbases and big engines, is hit hard. So what better way to solve that than introduce a small premium car with a much smaller CAFE figure? And if that car can be built in relatively large numbers it will keep the rest of the range viable. So even though Porsche enthusiasts will throw up their arms in horror, this proposed ‘Mini Porsche’ could be the companies lifeline, in much the same way as the profits on the Cayenne have allowed Porsche to forge on.

So what’s the car likely to be? Well, it’s inevitably going to be based on the Golf platform with either a derivative of the R32 engine or the V6 from the Cayenne (which, incidentally, is rumoured to be getting a diesel version!). Its competition? Aimed fairly and squarely at the BMW 135i and, ‘in-house’, the Audi S3 and Golf R32, I’m sure it will be a huge success.

Don’t times change?!

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