When the king starts to stumble and stagger, all of the courtiers starts to worry. That’s where the motor industry in Europe is right now. Porsche is struggling. Badly. The famed sports car maker, which since the early 2000s has really been more a maker of luxury SUVs, with some sports cars on the side, has seen its profits cut by two-thirds, customers desert its vaunted electric models, and a sense of chaos imbue its model plans.
This could be a foretaste of things to come across the industry. Peter Wells, professor of business and sustainability at the well-respected Centre for Automotive Industry Research in Cardiff University, he told The Irish Times: “My belief is that Porsche is, in a sense, a kind of pathfinder for what might happen more broadly in the car industry, and also indicative of a broader sense of unease, or a lack of clarity in the industry as to where it goes next.”
Car companies regularly run into trouble. Mighty General Motors, happily turning profits right now, was in the wake of the 2008 financial crash rescued by the US government and essentially nationalised. Jaguar Land Rover almost regularly lurches from boom to bust and back again.
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