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      01-05-2020, 03:03 PM   #44
akkando
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cptobvious View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by medphysdave View Post
This is interesting. The NA engine may make a comeback

https://carbuzz.com/news/porsche-adm...-was-a-mistake
Funny, a buddy who is looking to buy a Cayman just sent me a link to that article. He's not a Porsche fanboy, and has no attachment to the whole "NA6 is always better" creed, so he read the article and his reaction was, "Who in the world would, in their right mind, pay all that extra money for a NA6?"

It's fascinating to me that the headline is "Porsche admits turbo four was a mistake." But, notice that Porsche doesn't seem to have plans to put NA6 engines back into all the Cayman & Boxster trims. Instead, what Porsche plans to do is offer a VERY EXPENSIVE / HIGH END trim, potentially ABOVE the current GTS trim with the NA6, and the base and S trims will continue to have the turbo 4 engines.

So, in other words, Porsche is doing what it does best: price discrimination. Meaning, you force your customers to reveal to you their true willingness to pay, and then you charge them for every single dime you possibly can. The reason that Porsche can offer so many options in their configurator, and why although a base Cayman costs < $60k, but by the time you've included all the options you want, it's $80k, is because they use a manufacturing technique called Lean, which enables them to have incredibly flexible production and incorporate true customization. And it's through customization that customers reveal their true willingness to pay.

Their re-introduction of the NA6 engine into the Cayman & Boxster isn't them admitting any kind of mistake. It's just them taking advantage of customers showing their true colors and getting those customers to pay through the nose.

For example, I personally love the turbo-4 and prefer it to NA6. So, my willingness to pay a premium for the NA6 is $0. However, clearly, there's an enthusiast / "purist" segment with a willingness to pay premium of > $20k. So, by using price discrimination, Porsche extracts my maximum willingness to pay by offering me a turbo-4 Cayman at $60k and they extract $80k from the purist by offering the purist a NA6.

It's genius!
You would have to know sales if the turbo 4 to know if it worked out for Porsche or not.
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