Porsche has announced a drop in profits. And not the kind of "statistical error" drop, but the kind that sets off alarms in boards of directors and quiet panic among shareholders. They may be drinking tranquilizers in Stuttgart, but the real trauma is actually taking place in Slovenian living rooms. Why? Because for the average Slovenian, Germany is still the promised land. It is our industrial "Father", our model of order, discipline and engineering superiority. If Porsche falls, if the symbol of German power falls, then our worldview is also shaken.
The news, which in normal times would be read during the stock market reports and forgotten by lunchtime, this time struck like a bolt from the blue. Why? Because Porsche it's not just a company. It is a barometer of European self-confidence. It's the kind of company where people used to stand in lines, where people waited for a car like it was salvation, and where a used model was sometimes more expensive than a new one.
Just two years ago, most people would have sent me to a mental institution for forced observation if I had declared that Porsche – that bulletproof symbol of German engineering – was clinically dead. Today, with the news of A 99% profit crash, and we all silently look at the ground. But be careful, the drop in profits is just a symptom. The disease is worse.
There are no more lines today. There are no customers. And the moment you shakes the German altar, a quiet panic reigns in Slovenian living rooms.
Today, the German car industry looks like that aging rock star who sings hits from 1985 on stage in too-tight leather pants while the audience in the front row browses TikTok. And the worst part? Brussels and our politicians think they can save this star by banning him from retirement by law.
The invasion of “hobby football coaches” and false diagnoses
As soon as the news hit the airwaves, “hobby football coaches” came crawling out of every nook and cranny. This is the same caste of people who are the coach during the World Cup, virologists during the epidemic, and now they are suddenly strategic directors of the automotive industry.
Some shout: “They pushed too much electricity, that's it! People want noise!” Others shout: "They weren't bold enough, Tesla ate them, they fell asleep!"
Both sides are right and both are wrong. The truth is, as always, more complex and lies on that unpleasant meta-level that we don't like to talk about in the pub. The problem for Porsche – and with it the whole of Germany – is not which engine they install. The problem is that their entire business model, which has worked like a Swiss watch for 70 years, has hit the wall of the new reality.
The automotive development cycle takes a decade. The car you see in the showroom today was designed when the iPhone was still a novelty. You can't just turn on your heel and say, "Oops, starting tomorrow we're making iPads on wheels."This is a tanker that doesn't stop." And this tanker is now sailing in the wrong direction.
Technological “Overshoot” and the End of the Status Symbol
For decades, Germans have been selling what economists call "premium performance". They were faster, better, more engineered. Today? Today something happens that we call "overshoot".
When you sit in an electric Smart or some Chinese "noname" crossover, it accelerates to a hundred faster than the best Porsche 911 from ten years ago. Technology has democratized speed. If any washing machine on wheels can accelerate like a rocket, then what does Porsche even sell?
They lost their USP (Unique Selling Proposition). All they have left is nostalgia and the brand. And this is where things get tragicomic. Because they know that an electric car has no soul (read: sound), they are now selling us speakers. Look Fiat Abarth – a small electric car that has a speaker on the outside to simulate the hum of an engine. It's like having a Vegetarian draws bloody lines on tofu, to looked like a steak. Pathetic. This is not engineering, this is theater. And some automotive journalists are even praising and applauding it.
From “Rich & Healthy” to “Rich & Old”
It's even worse with the demographics themselves. What was a Porsche in the past? A car for “the bosses”. Stiff, loud, uncomfortable. A clutch harder than your character. Proof that you've conquered life and have a healthy spine.
Today, the Germans are selling us rising SUVs. Why? Because their customers are old. They need a high seat because of their back pain, and heated seats because of their prostate. We have moved from the category of “Rich and healthy” to “Rich and old.” Porsche has become a sinfully expensive orthopedic device with a badge.
And Slovenian nouveau riche buy this, thinking they are buying sportiness, but in reality they are buying a ticket to the geriatric waiting room.
From “Freude am Fahrenheit” to “Freude am Regulation”
Look the truth in the eye. Sit in a modern German "premier". A car hits you., if you're not wearing a seatbelt, it beeps if you go 2 km/h too fast past a school, and it shakes your steering wheel if you touch the line.
It's no longer a pleasure to drive; this is a ride with an instructor paid for by the European Commission. German engineers have become slaves to their own creativity, prisoners of Excel spreadsheets and regulations. Instead of innovation, they sell us control.
On the other hand you have Tesla and the Chinese. They're not selling a car. They sell software with some tin foil wrapped around it. It's a leap similar to the one between Blackberry and iPhoneAnd let's be honest: no one misses a physical keyboard on their phone anymore, even though we all claimed back then that a "serious businessman" couldn't work without one.
The German car has become a product for a generation that needs high seating due to a sore lower back and heated seats due to a prostate. The “Rich & Healthy” category has become “Rich & Old”. And that's not how you build the future, This way you build a comfortable waiting room for death..
Usain Bolt and the Brussels capitulation
And what does Europe do when it sees it is losing the race? Change the rules.
Imagine you are running a sprint on 100 meters against Usain Bolt (China)He's at 90 meters, you're panting at 60 meters with your shoelaces untied. And instead of speeding up, you stop and demand that the finish line be moved to 150 meters.
That's exactly what Brussels has done by relaxing the 2035 targets. "Let's give ourselves a little more time," they say.Let's save the internal combustion engine!"What nonsense. If you're slow, extending the track doesn't help you. It helps the fast one gain an even greater advantage."
While in Germany they are popping champagne because they will be able to produce piston engines for a few more years and dream of synthetic fuels, in China they are dying of laughter. We have just given them a decade to run us over completely. They are not developing a better piston. They are developing 800-volt systems, 400 kW charging and AI that drives better than a human. We are concerned with how to preserve the “tradition”.
Slovenian “Janitor” in a German museum
Why should we in Slovenia be concerned about this? Because we are those small, hardworking subcontractors. We make the screws, lights, and covers for this German machine. Our economy is sucked into the German industrial breast.
If Germany becomes an open-air museum – a nice, tidy, sterile museum of industrial history, where Chinese tourists will watch how they used to work “vrum-vrum” – then we are the janitors in this museum. And the janitors are the first to fly when the money for heating runs out.
Slovenia must wake up from this guest worker illusions...Germany will not save us because it cannot save itself. They have become prisoners of their own success, of past models and of a bureaucracy that stifles any “Entdeckungsprozess” (discovery process), as economists would say.
It's time to take down the poster 911s off the wall. The meteor has already fallen. The dinosaurs are still grazing, but the grass is already dry. And if we don't quickly realize that the future is not in nostalgic rumble, but in silent, lightning-fast efficiency, we will be left on the platform. Unfortunately, the train will head towards Beijing.
