Porsche to cut 911 production – report
July 2, 2009 by David Twomey
Weakening demand may force German sports car maker Porsche to further cut production of its iconic 911 model, according to reports.
Reuters Newsagency says that the falling sales is forcing Porsche to consider cutting production later this year at its main Zuffenhausen plant near Stuttgart where the 911 Carrera is built.
“We have to think about this if car sales continue to develop like this and do not recover,” Reuters quoted a company source as saying.
Due to the ramp-up of production of the newly introduced Panamera luxury sedan in the second half of 2009, Porsche’s plant in Leipzig, Germany, which assembles the Panamera, and the Cayenne SUV should remain unaffected by the output cuts in Zuffenhausen.
To counteract a severe slump in demand, Porsche said late in January it will cut costs this year by far more than 100 million euros (US$140.7 million) and will halt production in Zuffenhausen by another 19 days before its summer break in addition to the 11 already taken since the start of last December.
A Porsche spokesman said no decision was made yet for further production cuts, but if it became necessary management and labour could decide quickly on such a measure.
In the first nine months of the fiscal year to July, Porsche’s global sales fell 28 per cent to 53,635 vehicles.
Print it: 
No surprise. One GT-R for me please. Faster and cheaper.
JOE^^^^
Cannot really compare a icon 911 with a ricer GTR
A 10 year old 911 has street cred and also gets the looks and winks from the fairer gender.
A female would most likely not even spit on a GTR, “ITS ONLY A NISSAN” who cares how fast it is [SLOWER around TheRing then the new stock V8 Vette!]
FYI a bog stock $15k Yamaha R1 would destroy a GTR
Maybe if they reduced the prices of the 911 a little….
Cheers
F-0
Actually F-0, I think you can compare them. 5th Gear and Bruno Senna certainly thought so.
http://www.gtrblog.com/2008/09.....he-911-tu/
ps. Active video link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....ature=fvst
FO wrote
“Cannot really compare a icon 911 with a ricer GTR”
So is icon and so what..but very overpriced one and that’s why Porsche is paying the price themselves now,
400K+ for a car?? No thanks..I take GTR any day for fraction of the price.
How is a Porsche 911 over-priced? Lamborghini Gallardo’s start from almost double the price of a stock Carerra and only achieve a fraction of a performance premium. As for the Nissan – GT-Rs probably should be priced higher. I thought thought the GT-R was making a loss? I understand the car was never designed to be a bread winner but rather to lift the profile of the brand so shouldn’t its price be judged by the value of other vehicles in the Nissan range?
who would have thought the global market for $200k sports cars is limited…
on the other hand GM can’t crank out $30k SS Camaros quick enough
I like Porsches. One of my favourites if a 993 Carrera 2 but no one can deny the 911 has the stink of ‘Macquarie Banker tool’.
F-O of course you can compare the two. Nearly every motoring media outlet and magazine has run a comparison in the last twelve months. Where have you been for that long?? Oh bTW the GTR whopped the Porsche in every one of them. Its just a better all rounder. Not that id buy one.
Given that Nissan openly benchmarked the performance of the GTR against the Porsche 911 Turbo, yes you can compare them.
I don’t think you can compare their street cred so easily. Both cars are hugely respected by their fans, it’s just that their fans are different.
I money was no object, I’d go for the Porsche. I just like them better.
If my budget was only around the $150-160k then I’d be more than happy with the GTR – it is also an awesome car and would impress the hell out just about everyone I know and put a big big grin on my face.
Pretty much every car maker has seen a drop in sales. Cutting production is not great, but I don’t think Porsche will be too worried.
Credit crisis or not, Porsche should be selling no matter what the environment, if they are really struggling then I believe they should just shut down the plant. It kills me to see such a proud company resort to this….
It may ven force Porsche to hire a car stylist, having sacked their last one in 1963 Old does not make it iconic.
I agree the Nissan is great car but I`d only own one if I had everything I wanted in life and was looking at a car simply for the purpose of thrashing it either on a track or on my favorite piece of road. There is no way I could live with it as my only drive, its simply to ugly inside and out.
I’ll take a 911 over a GT-R. Who here has actually driven a GT-R? I have. It’s boring at normal speeds and around normal corners. You have to be on a track to enjoy it and who here would actually take it to a track more than say, once a fortnight? You can have fun in a 911 while driving through town. It’s zippier.
However, I do think they can and should be compared.
Unfortunately Alex I haven`t but by the sounds of things I`m not missing all that much.
You can compare the GT-R with the 911 but all I’m saying is that if Nissan wanted to actually make a direct profit from the sale of the GT-R it would need to be priced much higher. The Porsche is therefore very reasonably priced.
I’m sure Nissan is making good money on the GT-R. Sales, service and parts. They are doing huge volume and enjoying 100% sales take-up. There’s no way they’d have even started this project at a loss.
Add to this the reusable techologies they’ve developmeed as a result, which will surely trickle down into the rest of their range.
it’s inevitable given the financial climate – they’ll be on the top of my shopping list once this recession is over.