Presenting ... the 1980 Corvette America!
Posted on 07/27/2005 12:47:46 PM PDT by spetznaz
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Porsche will build a four-door car starting in 2009, the company announced Wednesday.
To be called the Panamera, the car will have four doors and four seats but will have a swooping, coupe-like profile. It will have a front-mounted engine driving the rear wheels. Pricing for the car, which is still under development, has not been announced.
The company expects to sell at least 20,000 Panameras per year, according to the announcement, which would make it the company's most popular model by far. Porsche is currently on track to sell about 9,600 Boxster sports cars this year, about 14,000 Cayenne SUVs and about 8,000 911 sports cars.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
All I know is that in interviewing probably 10 different Porsche engineers from Germany over the past 20 years, not one of them said "por-sha" while all we US journalists tripped over ourselves with the "sha"
Well, here in America, thats a Porsh. We also call it soccer. And its a "toe-may-toe". We also name our towns with foreign names, but pronounce them the American way (i.e "Vur-sails", M0).
They were being polite and trying to use the English pronunciation.
;-)
Look at the new Audi3..it's a Jetta, for about $10k MORE.
1987 (Chrysler) Lamborghini Portofino
Gee ... I wonder where the old Intrepid got its styling from.
Wow. Just... wow.
Ewwwwwww.
What's the other name for a four-door Porsche?
Volkswagen.
Who knows, this might sell OK, but if the Cayenne is any indicator it'll be another flop in the marketplace.
Base Cayenne is what, $46K..the turbo version is $86 K...marketing insanity..
American buyers will hold out until they can get employee pricing...
The Cayenne Turbo, with no added options, is $90K-plus. It's the most expensive SUV on the planet. With options, it can break the $100K barrier, easily.
The FX45 is only a hair slower, costs *half* as much, has fewer "quirks", and does everything else about as well as a Cayennne. It will stomp a Cayenne S.
IIRC, Porsche employees either have to pay full price or get it for free (depending on position).
Standard German rules of pronunciation for any word ending in an "e" like that is to pronounce it. That was one of my problems in correctly speaking German when I was learning it, I'd always forget to pronounce that "e." I spent 15 years over there and always heard the "e" pronounced. However, well-meaning Americans do tend to put more emphasis on the "e" sound than the Germans do.
That's got to be one of the butt-ugliest cars I've ever seen (outside of the Aztec, of course.)
"Americans love the say Porscha, but Germans rarely do."
In German, the "e" at the end of a word is pronounced "uh."
"Bitte" is pronounced "bit-uh." "Habe" is pronounced "Hahb-uh," etc.
Hence, "Porsche" is pronounced as "Por-shuh" in Germany.
And I'm not a snob, my Oma (Grandma) came from Germany and never learned English, so we grew up speaking some German, although I have fogotten 99.999% of it!
Ed
1954 open-top Porsche 356 American Roadster.
I'm betting "Panamera" is an homage to La Carrera Panamericana, the Mexican race along the Pan American highway. Porsche was very successful in this race in the beginning, the 356 practically being synonymous with the race. The Porsche "Carrera" is named after it. Now they're using the "Panamericana" part.
This example is funny because Greeks pronounce Nike so that it rhymes with 'strike'. Their reasoning is that it is an American company, so thats how it would be pronounced.
The word Nike, of course, comes from Greek, and the way we say it in English is about as close as a non-Greek speaker can come to the correct pronunciation.
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