Porsche Centre Lagos is celebrating with other dealerships
worldwide as the Porsche 911 clocks 50 years in production.
You may wonder why is this is so significant in the life
of the Porsche brand. The reason isn’t farfetched. The number of vehicles that
have made it to the half-century mark can be counted on one hand.
Even the venerable Model T lasted barely two decades in
production - despite Henry Ford's stubbornness.
So it's not surprising that the folks at Porsche worldwide
are celebrating.
Porsche's iconic 911 sports car made its debut exactly 50
years ago on the stands at the Frankfurt Motor Show.
To celebrate this success, Porsche is introduced a special
anniversary edition at this year's Frankfurt Motor Show, with a limited run of
just 1,963 to honour the year the 911 made its debut.
What's particularly unusual about the sports car's
longevity is the fact that, despite all the changes that have been made under
the skin and to the interior, today's Porsche 911 maintains the original's
basic exterior profile.
When he was asked to create the latest model, designer
Michael Mauer was quick to recognize some serious challenges. Though he was
charged with coming up with something distinctive for the seventh-generation
model, he knew that a radical redesign simply "wouldn't be a 911."
That meant maintaining the distinctive silhouette—starting with the long hood,
bulging headlamps, "flyline" roof and, of course, rear-engine layout.
That didn't mean standing still. Introduced last year, the
Gen-7 model was a bit lower, wider and longer than the previous model. It was
more aerodynamic and, defying conventional wisdom, more powerful while being
about 16 percent more fuel-efficient.
Not all changes over the years have been uncontroversial;
Porsche fanatics raised a fuss in 1998, when the maker abandoned the
time-tested air-cooled 911 engine in favour of a more modern water-cooled power
train. But the 911's distinctive rear-mounted engine layout has held since Day
One.
Porsche reported that it has sold
820,000 911s.
The original design was sketched out
by Ferdinand "Butzi" Porsche in 1959, and the auto was intended to
serve as the replacement for the original 356. Delivered to showrooms in early
1964, the car was originally going to be called the Porsche 901, but the
manufacturer had to make a quick change when French automaker Peugeot claimed a
monopoly on using "0" in the middle of three numbers.
A year after the European launch, the first 911 reached the U.S., incidentally, going for a then-pricey $6,500. The base Porsche 911 Carrera model carries an MSRP of $83,050. Few get out of the showroom at that price, however, as Porsche traditionally makes almost every feature an option that rapidly drives up the price.
And the 911 is really a family of variants, including models such as the all-wheel-drive Carrera 4S and the top-line turbo, with a base price of $138,450.
The 911 50th Anniversary Edition will be offered in two unique colours: light-gray metallic and dark graphite. It will also feature a "two-tone 3-D-effect" badge on the rear marking it a "911 50" edition. The edition will be available in the U.S. for $124,100.
But while the 911 is no longer the brand's best-seller, it is the icon and generally rated the most popular of the German maker's offerings. Indeed, in the 1999 international balloting for the Car of the Century, the Porsche 911 came in No. 5, behind the Model T and the Volkswagen Beetle—which just happens to trace its roots to the Porsche family.
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