Here’s a Porsche facelift that even our eagle-eyed spy photographers didn’t see coming. We knew that the Stuttgart-based sports car company was working on revised versions of its 911 and Panamera, but we had no idea the hood badges fitted to those cars would also be getting a makeover.
The result of a ridiculously lengthy three-year design and development process timed to coincide with Porsche’s 75th anniversary this year, the new badge is a subtle reworking of the crest first used in 1952 and will be rolled out on cars towards the end of 2023.
Porsche was never going to radically rework its famous shield, and the changes might not be immediately obvious when you see the new version in isolation. The basic elements – the Porsche name at the top, the horse at the center and the four quadrants containing black and red stripes and antlers – are still there. But when you see the old and new versions side by side, as in the image at the top of this post, it’s fairly easy to spot the new bits.
The first is that the whole badge now has a brushed metal style instead of the previous glitzier golden look. Porsche has also removed the bobbly background, used a honeycomb pattern for the the red bars and picked out the ‘Stuttgart’ lettering in black. There are also subtle revisions to the shape of the six antlers, and did you notice that the horse seems to look a little more assertive and is jumping slightly higher on its back legs? It still doesn’t leap quite as high as Ferrari‘s horse, mind.
Related: Porsche Will Show The “Sportscar Of The Future” At 75th Anniversary Event
When combined, those elements make for a badge that looks more modern than the one it replaces, but is still instantly recognizable. As are the previous revisions, because this isn’t the first time Porsche has updated its crest. It also introduced changes in 1954, 1963, 1973, 1994 and 2008.
Before the crest’s introduction in 1952, Porsche cars were identified by lettering showing the brand’s name. An open competition to find a suitable trademark design was held in 1951 but no entries were deemed suitable and the final design was created by Franz Xaver Reimspieß, a draughtsman who is believed to have also come up with the original VW logo in 1936. The horse is taken from Stuttgart’s seal and the black and red segments and deer antlers came from the traditional crest of Württemberg-Hohenzollern.
