Tag Archives: Porsche

News

A Million-Dollar Porsche 911 Speedster That Lost Six Figures Before Its First Oil Change

In the high-stakes world of Porsche restomods, depreciation is supposed to be something that happens to Cayennes, not carbon-fiber 911 Speedsters. But this Gunther Werks build just proved that even the bluest of blue-chip air-cooled exotica isn’t immune to gravity.

This particular Gunther Werks 911 Speedster—one of just 25 ever made—recently sold for $965,000. That sounds outrageous until you realize it had traded hands for $1.15 million only a few months earlier. That’s nearly $200,000 gone in under a fiscal quarter, which is about the same rate of value loss as a Bentley leaving the showroom.

Ouch.

The car left Gunther Werks’ Huntington Beach facility in October 2022, built to the firm’s obsessive standards and finished in a bespoke Gin Tree Green metallic. A year later, it landed at New York–based HK Motorcars, who apparently saw it less as a toy and more as a rolling financial instrument. That gamble didn’t quite pay off.

The dealer tossed it onto Bring a Trailer, where bidding topped out at $905,000—well shy of their reserve. Soon after, a private deal closed at $965,000, locking in a $185,000 loss for the seller. Whether that means the dealer overpaid or the new buyer scored a bargain is something the next resale will reveal. But either way, it’s a reminder that even seven-figure Porsches don’t always go up.

Fortunately, if you’re going to lose six figures on a car, it might as well be one that looks like this.

Gunther Werks doesn’t restore 911s so much as re-engineer them. Each Speedster begins as a donor 993 that’s stripped to its steel skeleton before being reborn with a full carbon-fiber body. Every panel is lighter, stiffer, and shaped with modern aerodynamic intent, even if the silhouette still screams late-’90s Stuttgart.

This one’s custom green paint is offset by matte green stripes and yellow Porsche script, a subtle nod to motorsport heritage wrapped in boutique-level craftsmanship. It’s less “classic 911” and more “what Porsche would build if it ignored accounting.”

Underneath the carbon lies a 4.0-liter air-cooled flat-six that’s about as far from stock as a Mezger can get. With Mahle pistons, forged rods, and a billet crankshaft, it produces 430 horsepower and 330 pound-feet of torque—numbers that would’ve sounded absurd in a 1990s 911 but now feel perfectly at home in a carbon-skinned Speedster.

Power goes through a six-speed manual, because of course it does, and the chassis is handled by adaptive coilovers with Brembo brakes big enough to stop a small aircraft. Six-piston calipers up front, four in the rear, and more grip than a tax audit.

Inside, the same no-expense-spared philosophy continues. Gunther Werks cabins are more private jet than vintage Porsche, blending bespoke materials with modern hardware while still preserving the basic 911 layout.

So yes, someone lost nearly $200,000 on this Speedster in record time. But the person who bought it for $965,000 may have just landed one of the most exquisite air-cooled Porsches ever built for what passes as a bargain in this rarefied world.

In the restomod market, timing is everything. And sometimes, even a million-dollar Porsche has a bad day on Wall Street.

Source: Bring a Trailer

News

Porsche to Close Nearly a Third of Its China Showrooms Amid Steep Sales Drop

For years, China was Porsche’s turbocharger. It took the brand’s already bulletproof balance sheet and spooled it up with relentless growth, seemingly immune to global slowdowns or shifting buyer tastes. Now, that same market is acting more like a blown head gasket.

Porsche is preparing to shut down roughly 30 percent of its Chinese dealerships, a dramatic retreat that underscores just how badly things have turned. By 2026, the brand plans to operate only about 80 showrooms in China—down from 114 by the end of 2025 and roughly 150 just a year earlier. That’s not a trim. That’s a hard reset.

Officially, Porsche China CEO Pan Liqi says the move is about cost control. But the timing tells a harsher story. Late in 2025, multiple Porsche stores reportedly closed outright, some leaving behind half-finished deals, missing paperwork, and customers chasing refunds after franchise operators simply disappeared. In the ultra-polished world of Porsche retail, that kind of disorder is a flashing warning light on the dash.

The Sales Collapse Behind the Curtain

The numbers explain the urgency. Porsche delivered 41,938 vehicles in China in 2025, a 26 percent drop from the year before. That alone would be painful. But zoom out a little more and it gets ugly: in 2022, Porsche sold nearly 96,000 cars in China. In just three years, the brand has lost more than half its volume.

That collapse is dragging down the entire company. Global Porsche deliveries fell 10 percent in 2025, to 279,449 vehicles, with declines in every region except North America, which merely held steady. China isn’t just underperforming—it’s the anchor tied to Porsche’s bumper.

And while macroeconomic factors matter, Porsche’s product mix isn’t helping. Electric vehicles, once supposed to be the brand’s next growth engine, are getting absolutely steamrolled by domestic Chinese rivals.

Taycan Meets Its Match

The Taycan, Porsche’s technological flag bearer, is bleeding. Sales fell another 22 percent in 2025, following a steep drop the year before. Local competitors like Xiaomi are offering flashy, high-tech electric sedans at far lower prices, and Chinese buyers—long loyal to European prestige—are no longer automatically paying extra for a Stuttgart badge.

The result? Porsche is quietly backing away from its all-in EV posture in China. In the near term, the company is shifting focus back toward internal-combustion engines and hybrids, where its brand cachet and engineering reputation still carry more weight.

A Retreat That Looks Like Repositioning

The money saved from all those shuttered showrooms won’t just pad the balance sheet. Porsche says it will funnel the cash into research and development, including a new integrated R&D center in Shanghai designed to tailor future products more closely to Chinese tastes.

Two new crossovers—both offered with gasoline and plug-in hybrid powertrains—are slated to debut later this year. That suggests Porsche has realized what many Western automakers are learning the hard way: Chinese buyers don’t just want electrification. They want choice, and they want it wrapped in cutting-edge software and design.

But even with new models on the way, expectations are being reset. Porsche has said that in 2026 it will prioritize “quality over quantity” in China—a corporate way of admitting that another weak year is likely.

From Growth Engine to Reality Check

China didn’t just make Porsche bigger. It made the company believe that demand for premium German performance was effectively unlimited. That illusion is now gone.

What remains is a brutally competitive, tech-driven market where local brands are fast, smart, and cheap—and where prestige alone no longer guarantees sales. Porsche is still Porsche, but in China, the road ahead is no longer a high-speed autobahn. It’s a tight, crowded street, and the brand is finally being forced to slow down and pick its line carefully.

For a company built on momentum, that may be the hardest shift of all.

Source: Car News China

News

The new Porsche Cayenne Electric has entered production

By now, we’ve all heard the line: Porsche is going electric without losing its soul. But the new Cayenne Electric doesn’t just repeat that promise—it shows what it looks like when Stuttgart actually puts its money, its factories, and its engineering pride behind it.

The Cayenne Electric debuted in November 2025, and Porsche didn’t waste time turning press releases into reality. Production is already rolling in Bratislava, Slovakia, on the same flexible line that builds gasoline and hybrid Cayennes. That matters more than it sounds. It means Porsche isn’t hedging—it’s committing. Whether buyers want pistons, plug-ins, or pure electrons, Porsche can shift production on the fly.

But the real story here isn’t just that the Cayenne has gone electric. It’s how Porsche built it.

An Electric SUV with Supercar Muscle

Let’s get straight to the headline number: 850 kilowatts, or 1,156 horsepower, in the top-spec Cayenne Turbo. That makes it the most powerful production Porsche ever built—more than any 911, more than the Taycan Turbo GT, more than anything wearing a crest.

That figure alone tells you what Porsche is trying to do. This isn’t a polite family EV that happens to be fast. This is a Porsche first and an electric vehicle second.

Porsche isn’t publishing Nürburgring times yet, but let’s be clear: an all-wheel-drive electric SUV with this much output is going to bend physics, shred tires, and embarrass a long list of combustion-powered super SUVs.

A Battery Porsche Actually Owns

Most carmakers buy their batteries. Porsche decided that wasn’t good enough.

Instead, it developed its own battery modules in-house and built a dedicated factory—the Porsche Smart Battery Shop in Horná Streda, about 100 kilometers northeast of Bratislava—to make them. This facility handles everything from cell preparation to laser welding, foaming, cooling-plate integration, and end-of-line testing.

That matters because batteries are now what engines used to be. If you don’t control them, you don’t really control the car.

The Cayenne Electric uses a 113-kWh high-voltage battery built around large pouch cells for high energy density. Porsche claims more than 600 kilometers (370+ miles) of range, along with 800-volt fast charging. But the real engineering flex is the double-sided cooling system—cooling plates above and below the battery, a world first in a production vehicle. It keeps the pack in its ideal temperature window more consistently, which means more sustained performance, better charging, and longer life.

In Porsche-speak: fewer compromises.

A Factory Built for the Electric Age

The Cayenne Electric is born in a newly expanded platform hall at Volkswagen Group’s Bratislava site in Devínska Nová Ves. This is where the skateboard-style EV chassis takes shape before the body—side walls, roof, doors, hood, and tailgate—is added from one of Europe’s most modern press shops.

It’s almost fully automated, fast, and obsessively precise. And Porsche keeps its own engineers on site permanently through what it calls a “resident model”, making sure problems are solved in real time instead of disappearing into corporate email chains.

That’s how you launch a new generation of vehicles without the usual startup chaos.

A Porsche Interior That Finally Goes Full Digital

Inside, the Cayenne Electric goes harder into screens than any Porsche before it. It has the largest total display area the company has ever installed, paired with a faster, more responsive Porsche Communication Management (PCM) system.

More importantly, Porsche says this will be the most customizable Cayenne ever. Given how obsessed Cayenne buyers are with personalization, that could be as big a selling point as horsepower.

The Cayenne Electric isn’t just another electric SUV. It’s Porsche using its engineering culture to try to dominate the premium EV space the same way it once ruled sports sedans and performance SUVs.

With over 1,100 horsepower, a battery Porsche builds itself, a cutting-edge factory, and a platform designed for both volume and flexibility, this isn’t a compliance car. It’s a power move.

The Cayenne made Porsche rich. The Cayenne Electric might be what keeps it relevant.

Source: Porsche