Joy. Love. Happiness.
Emotions. Inner turmoil. Excitement projected outward. Brief and intense. Sometimes pleasant, sometimes less so. We experience these states consciously or not so consciously: Joy. Fear. Love. Happiness. Sadness. Are emotions feelings? We don’t really know. At least not with any certainty. Scientists consider them hypothetical constructs, and debates about the subject fill entire libraries. For Porsche they are—well what, exactly?
Dr. Josef Arweck
EditorWe—and not only we—are convinced: victories, tradition, innovations, performance, versatility, design, functionality, exclusivity, and sustainability. By each of these, or rather by all of them combined. Porsche: more a wish than an actuality. More longed-for than envied. More a statue of liberty than a symbol of status. Legend. Pure emotion. That’s plain to see in children when they run their hands reverently over a 911. The way their eyes grow round, their posture and voices change, their anticipation grows. You can almost hear their hearts beat faster. Later, when they’re older, 70 to 90 percent of their decision to buy a Porsche will be based on pure emotion.
Authentic brands create the space for emotionality. “Mechanical calculations aren’t what lead to good brand creations, but rather the capacity for empathy that arises from educating the self. Creative insight.” So said Hans Domizlaff, the founder of brand management, back in 1937. That was the year Professor Ferdinand Porsche’s design office, known as Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche GmbH, Konstruktion und Beratung für Motoren- und Fahrzeugbau, became a limited partnership and left Stuttgart’s Kronenstraße 24 for Zuffenhausen.
Cars will drive themselves in the future. They’ll run differently. They may not even belong to us anymore. Will cars—or even sports cars—lose their hold on us? Does rationality with respect to cars also mean the absence of emotions? No, says Michael Mauer, Porsche’s Chief Designer. For him, designers are not actually designers. They’re “chief emotion officers.” Why? Because three things will never lose their significance: attractive design, innovation, and—perhaps most important of all—emotion.
This issue of Christophorus is once again an encounter with the emotional side of Porsche. An homage to the racing successes of past years with all their evident joy and silent anguish. The cult of the 928. The pure joy of motion at the Stelvio Pass. And the exuberance of children—whose excitement might just leap off the page as they drive a 550 Spyder built only for them. A promise for the future.
Wherever you have come from, wherever you are going, our Christophorus will accompany you.