How long is 18 years in the auto industry? Enough time for two generations and a half of a car model, you would hazard. But in Zuffenhausen, 18 years can also be enough time to shelve a model, put the only known prototype into cold storage and generally go about getting involved in everything – from an engine for Harley Davidson to building and successfully mastering the super SUV segment. What you see in the blue corner is the car that was ‘nearly’ never built.
If he were alive today, Michael Crichton would have loved to write a novel mirroring the life of Porsche through its 60 years of existence. And the Panamera would be devoted to half the paperback. Back in the early ’90s, an engineer at Porsche by the name of Ulrich Bez was handed over a budget of 300 million pounds to design, develop, engineer and produce a four-door saloon that would make the best from BMW and Mercedes-Benz shrink into oblivion. Project 989, as it was called, would be Porsche’s first attempt at making something more than a 2+2 sports car.
The design was frozen, a prototype was created and generally all looked swell, until the world markets collapsed and Porsche was forced to backtrack on the project. Ulrich Bez moved on to other things, but he didn’t forget Project 989. Neither did Porsche. Thus, today, we have two cars that live in the name of the 989 – the other being the Aston Martin Rapide. Oh, and Ulrich Bez is the current MD of Aston Martin.
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