Porsche Designer Series
Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG (shortened to Porsche or Porsche AG), is a German sports car manufacturer, founded in 1931 by Ferdinand Porsche, the engineer who also created the first Volkswagen. The company is located in Zuffenhausen, a city district of Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg. The company slogan is: (Porsche,) There Is No Substitute.
In a May 2006 survey, Porsche was awarded first place as the most beautiful car automobile brand by Luxury Institute, New York; it questioned more than 500 households with a gross annual income of at least US $200,000 and a net worth of at least US $750,000 ([1]). The current Porsche lineup includes sports cars from the Boxster roadster to their most famous product, the 911. The Cayman is a hard top car similar to the Boxster. The Cayman features a slightly higher price range. The Cayenne is Porsche's mid-size luxury SUV. The Carrera GT supercar was recently phased out in May 2006. Future plans include a high performance luxury saloon/sedan, the Panamera. Also, Porsche is a leader in modern turbocharging technology, being the first to use a variable geometry turbocharger in a gasoline powered production automobile.
Porsche was awarded the 2006 J.D. Power award for highest initial quality of automobile brands.
As a company, Porsche is known for weathering changing market conditions with great financial stability, while retaining most production in Germany during an age when most other German car manufacturers have moved at least partly to Eastern Europe or overseas.[citation needed] The headquarters and main factory are still at Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen, but the Cayenne (and formerly the Carrera GT) is produced at Leipzig, in former East Germany. Most Boxster and Cayman production is outsourced to Valmet Automotive in Finland. The company has been highly successful in recent times, and indeed claims to be the most profitable car company in the world (in terms of profit margin per unit sold; its absolute profits would be dwarfed by Toyota) [2].
Porsche has for many years offered consultancy services to various other car manufacturers. Studebaker, SEAT, Daewoo, Subaru and Yugo have consulted Porsche on engineering for their cars or engines. Porsche also helped Harley-Davidson design their new engine in their newer V-Rod motorcycle.
In racing, Porsche's main rival has traditionally been Ferrari, though traditionally their production vehicles appeal to quite different personalities, if similar demographics. Commercially, Ferrari sells far fewer cars at much higher prices than Porsche (for example, there are no Ferraris under US $100,000, while almost all Porsches are priced below that figure). Porsche's rivalry with Ferrari is primarily because of both companies' storied racing heritage and the fact that some of their vehicles are of comparable performance, not because of direct competition between some models. Porsche's traditional rivals for the daily-driver marketplace are its fellow fellow German automakers Mercedes-Benz and BMW, who compete more directly with Porsche (example, the Boxster competes directly with the BMW Z4 and the Mercedes-Benz SLK). Ferrari, on the other hand, competes more directly with firms such as Lamborghini and Aston Martin (companies Porsche only competes partially with). Porsche also competes with Audi, Jaguar, and Maserati