The maxim “race on sunday, sell on monday” (run on Sunday, sell on Monday) that has motivated many brands to spend millions on motorsport for decades may no longer apply today. The link between the world of competition and production cars is increasingly distant. Do you agree?
But it's competition that continues to fuel the passion many of us have for car brands. Would Ferrari make sense without Formula 1? Would Porsche make sense without its historic connection to motorsport?
To these questions my answer is simple: no.
What Porsche has done is proof of that; I naturally speak of “Porsche Unseen”. With this gathering of models that have never seen the light of day, Porsche has once again made us dream of production versions of its competition cars. It presented more than 10 prototypes that during the last 10 years put the minds of its designers and engineers to innovate and try to go further.
Without a competition program, it would be impossible to do these exercises. There was no Porsche 919 Street, there was no Porsche 920, nor were there so many other models that already inhabit the garages of those who continue to love cars. And even if there were, there was no link to competition to legitimize them.
Without competition, instead of dream projects, there would be a museum of what Porsche was and is not.
Without competition, Porsche would no longer be a special brand and would become a “common” brand. After a period of greater distance from the world of competition, decided by Wendelin Wiedeking, CEO of Porsche between 1993 and 2009 — no, I still haven't forgiven him for canceling the Le Mans return program with the 9R3 — the German brand has never he moved further away from what has always been his natural environment: racing.
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I go even further: a Porsche without competition is not a Porsche, it is something else. And anyone who gives more than 100,000 euros for a car doesn't want anything. And if I gave the example of Porsche, I could have given many others.
Does anyone doubt that Toyota's competition program has done a lot for the image of the brand's hybrid system? Even though there is no direct connection between the all-powerful Toyota TS050 Hybrid and the friendly Yaris. I have no doubts.
And we can give the example of another brand, whose name starts in «Alfa» and ends in «Romeo». But I won't say what it is. If I did, I had to write another text. So, do we make an appointment next week?