In 2002, Porsche snapped the public’s opinion in two if this sent the first-generation Cayenne to compete in the then-new high-performance SUV segment. Its bet repaid, also it just manufactured the one millionth example.
Built in Bratislava, Slovakia, the milestone car (shown above) is a GTS model painted in Carmine Red. Don’t look for it within the company’s official museum; it has already been delivered to a customer in Germany, so it may be cruising at 130 mph on the autobahn as you read this. Taking 18 years to build a million cars may not sound impressive, not when Ford sold nearly 900,000 units of the F-Series in 2021, but it’s a significant achievement for a small enterprise like Porsche that hasn’t concerned itself with volume. Building the millionth 911 took 54 years.
And, without the hugely profitable Cayenne, we may do not have the current 911. As it took a break to celebrate its production milestone, Porsche candidly explained it began taking a look at branching out into the SUV segment after the 1990s as a way to boost its profits after a near-death experience earlier in the decade. It had been saved from an uncertain fate through the original Boxster, but executives knew they'd to reach more buyers by expanding the number to avoid ending up in the red again. Porsche consequently teamed up with Volkswagen to build up an off-roader code-named Colorado internally that blended the performance and handling buyers expected having a relatively high amount of all-terrain capability. Additionally, it required to offer space for five passengers and their gear.
Porsche created a new development facility near Stuttgart specifically for the Cayenne because its historic Weissach site was out of space, also it built a brand new factory in Leipzig to fabricate the model. Using the supply chain fired up, the firm unveiled the original Cayenne in September 2002 at the Paris auto show. Not everyone liked it, some argued Porsche didn't have business building an off-roader, but its fans were louder than its critics and sales ballooned noisy . 2000s; it took about seven years to reach the 250,000 milestone. Its unexpected success didn’t go unnoticed over the industry: rivals and copycats popped up like fall mushrooms.
So, 18 years and three generations later, the Cayenne lineup includes several variants which range from the base model towards the handling-focused GTS, plus plug-in hybrid versions along with a fastback-like Coupe introduced in 2021. Since its inception, it's won the grueling TransSyberia Rally, it has set lap records on the Nürburgring, and a diesel-powered model earned an area in the Guinness Book of World Records for towing an Airbus A380 for pretty much 46 yards. We don’t know what’s next yet, but we’re betting it’ll take less than 18 years to achieve the 2 million mark.
