In 2002, Porsche
Built in Bratislava, Slovakia, the milestone car (shown above) is a GTS model painted in Carmine Red. Don’t look for it in the company’s official museum; it has already been delivered to a customer in Germany, so it might be cruising at 130 mph on the autobahn as you read this. Taking 18 years to build a million cars might not sound impressive, not when Ford
And, without the hugely profitable Cayenne, we may not have the current 911. As it took a break to celebrate its production milestone, Porsche candidly explained it began looking at branching out into the SUV segment at the end of the 1990s as a way to boost its profits after a near-death experience earlier in the decade. It was saved from an uncertain fate by the original Boxster
Porsche created a new development facility near Stuttgart specifically for the Cayenne because its historic Weissach site was out of space, and it built a new factory in Leipzig to manufacture the model. With the supply chain fired up, the firm unveiled the original Cayenne in September 2002 at the Paris auto show. Not everyone liked it, some argued Porsche had no business building an off-roader, but its fans were louder than its critics and sales ballooned during the early 2000s; it took about seven years to reach the 250,000 milestone. Its unexpected success didn’t go unnoticed across the industry: rivals and copycats popped up like fall mushrooms.
So, 18 years and three generati ons later, the Cayenne lineup includes several variants ranging from the base model to the handling-focused GTS, plus plug-in hybrid versions