70 Per Cent Of New Porsches Are Now SUVs

It’s official: Porsche has become an SUV brand. Seven out of every 10 cars the company delivered last year were either Macans or Cayennes.

The company has released its annual financial reports, showing that it delivered a record 237,778 cars in 2016. Of those, some 166,509 were made up of the Cayenne and Macan ranges, with the 911, Boxster, Cayman and Panamera ranges accounting for just 71,475 combined.

These numbers make astonishing reading, and it’s the Macan that’s chiefly responsible. In 2013, the last full year before the model’s launch, the Cayenne outsold all other Porsches combined, but only by a few thousand units. In 2016, with Cayenne sales down over 10,000 versus 2013, the Macan has taken Porsche’s SUV division stratospheric with sales of over 95,000.

It’s worth noting, of course, that Porsche SUVs aren’t your usual wallowy, slow, boring affairs, or even your less common over-stiffened ‘sporty’ SUV. They are genuinely lovely cars, and while their height and weight means they can never handle like one of the brand’s sports cars, they do still go around corners rather well.

It is, of course, fantastic news for the brand. The SUVs are extremely profitable and the company’s coffers must look something like the inside of Scrooge McDuck’s vault. You can just picture the executives swimming in a sea of gold coins…

It’s also good news elsewhere for Porsche. Its overall 911 sales are up a tiny bit, and the same goes for the Boxster and Cayman, despite criticism of their new four-cylinder turbocharged engines. Panamera sales are slipping, having been on a downward trend ever since the Macan was launched. It’s clear from the numbers that the Macan is stealing sales from both the Panamera and the Cayenne.

SUV dominance is actually good for ‘the other 30 per cent’. With so much money rolling in, Porsche can afford to keep making amazing sports cars and special projects like the 911 R. So while 70 per cent of new Porsches are now SUVs, at least it means that the cars we really want are safe.