Yeah, it's true.
Fresh from the next-gen Porsche 911 reveal, Detlev von Platen — Porsche's Member of the Executive Board for Sales and Marketing — was quizzed by Autocar India about whether an SUV variant of the ever popular 911 sports car could be on the cards.
“The 911 is the centre point for all design at Porsche, and you will see its influence in other vehicles”, he said.
“But taking the 911 and making an SUV out of it? Taking it higher? That could be a good idea, and of course it won’t be a model range, but it will be a limited, very niche product.”
Click here to read more about the 992-generation Porsche 911
On first glance, '911' and 'SUV' is a nutty combo ... like Trump and Jong-Un, or Shaun Johnson and club loyalty. But if one manufacturer can make it work, it's Porsche.
For one, they've weathered the traditional and purist storm successfully a few times now. The toughest of those was the Cayenne, which went from the topic of purist ire to helping effectively pioneer the luxury SUV segment in no time.
More recently the company announced its plans to expand its hybrid and EV line-up, with barely a peep coming from vocal traditionalists.
(Full disclosure, Shaun Johnson is an adult and more than capable of deciding what he wants to do with his rugby league career without angry people on the internet trying to shape his future.)
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The other thing to note is that, as weird as it sounds, the act of taking classic Porsche 911s and lifting them is becoming something of a trend these days. Type 'Safari Porsche 911' into your search engine of choice, and you'll find plenty of examples of people taking old 911s (930-generation cars in particular) and lifting them with big hearty rubber, bull bars, mud-flaps, fog lights, and the like.
Most of these are sly winks to Porsche's own rallying past, which involved 959s and 911s taking on events like the Paris to Dakar Rally through the '80s. But a production-model 'baja' 911 would be the manufacturer's first showroom 911 with off-road flavour.
In fact, it would be the first time the 911 badge would ever be paired with something other than a low-slung two-door sports car.