Porsche may once again start pushing the boundaries with a new model, as dealers report being shown a vehicle that is larger, wider, and longer than the Cayenne.
“It’s a new style of vehicle that is part sedan, part crossover,” a dealer told Automotive News and went on to call it rakish. Another dealer called it “very un-Porsche-like,” saying that it has a “flat rear design. It’s not anything like the Macan and Cayenne.”
Details on the vehicle remain unclear, but the dealers expected it to arrive on the market in the second half of the decade as a plug-in hybrid with a battery-electric variant to follow. That could mean it’s related to the flagship electric vehicle that is currently under development from Porsche, Audi, and Bentley.
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Codenamed “Landjet,” the vehicle is a three-row, seven-seat vehicle that it being developed as part of Audi’s Project Artemis. Expected to have a range of 404 miles, the project is supposed to be a demonstration of the best the Volkswagen Group can manage.
For those concerned that a three-row Porsche sounds like sacrilege, though, there is a glimmer of hope. Although a Porsche spokesperson refused to comment specifically on the vehicle shown to dealers, they did introduce doubt about the project.
Porsche is “very open in sharing ideas under an initiative—Porsche Unseen—the majority of which don’t make it beyond the ideas stage,” the spokesperson said. “Whether these go any further than renderings and ideas to make it to the production stage—let alone how they will be powered or configured—is undecided.”
Still, Porsche has shown that it is not wholly opposed to expanding the definition of what makes a Porsche. With the introduction of the Cayenne in 2002 and the Macan in 2013, the automaker proved that it can sell SUVs.
Moreover, those SUVs are much more popular with younger buyers than their cars. The median age of a Porsche car owner is 60, whereas the median age of its crossover owners is 38. With America’s love of all vehicles big and tall, it may make financial sense to add a three-row SUV to the lineup.
