2006 Porsche Cayman S 6 Speed 10k Miles Leather Like New on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Porsche celebrates 50 years of 911 with some excellent pics

The Porsche 911 is one of the most iconic sports cars of all time, and to celebrate the car's first 50 years, Porsche has released a stunning set of photos showing how far the 911 has come from the original back in 1963 to its current 991 generation. Unlike the recent 60-year photo spread that Chevrolet put together for the Corvette, though, Porsche's gallery only shows the original 911 and the current car.
Each time the 911 is redesigned, the car's front fenders, roofline and the shape of the side windows are key focal points. Even some of the interior cues have remained the same over the years, including the positioning of the ignition key on the left of the steering column and the five-gauge instrument cluster layout.
Scroll down for Porsche's press release breaking down the seven generations of the 911, and be sure to check out our gallery with plenty of high-res pics for you to download as a desktop wallpaper. In fact, we're providing these at 1920-pixels-wide instead of our usual 1280 wide. Enjoy!

Porsche recommits to Le Mans through 2018

Porsche is back at the forefront of sports endurance racing, and it has no intention of leaving anytime soon. The German automaker announced that it will stay in the LMP1 class of both the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the FIA World Endurance Championship through the end of 2018. So its rivals can look forward to a good three more years of heated competition at least. After winning at Le Mans a record 16 times, Porsche dropped out of competition for top honors in 1998. It returned to the front of the grid last year with the 919 Hybrid, winning the 6 Hours of Sao Paulo at the end of its debut season. Its greater victory, however, came earlier this summer when the revised version took a dominant 1-2 finish in the famous French endurance race. That put the team from Weissach in the lead for the World Endurance Championship, which it (spoiler alert!) further extended this weekend with another 1-2 finish in the inaugural 6 Hours of Nurburgring. "Motorsport is an important part of Porsche's brand identity – but not an end in itself. Racing has got to help the technology of future road going sports cars," said Porsche chief Matthias Muller in the statement below. "It was the revolutionary efficiency regulations that convinced us to return to top-level motorsport for the 2014 season. That we have managed to take the crown jewels of endurance racing in only our second year, with a one-two result in Le Mans in 2015 with our highly innovative and complex 919, is an outstanding testimony to the people in the Weissach research and development centre. The competition bears fruits and we see further potential for future synergy between the racing and road car programmes. This is why we have extended the programme." FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) and 24-Hours of Le Mans Porsche confirms LMP1 programme up to end of 2018 Stuttgart. Porsche continues racing into the future with the 919 Hybrid: The board of Porsche AG has decided to extend the Le Mans prototype programme until the end of the 2018 season. With its ground-breaking concept – a downsizing turbo engine and powerful energy recovery systems, combined with an extreme lightweight design – the racing car with a performance of around 1,000 hp serves as a research laboratory for future sports car technology. Matthias Muller, Chairman of the Executive Board of Porsche AG, said: "Motorsport is an important part of Porsche's brand identity – but not an end in itself.

Volkswagen Group's Vision 2030 strategy could bring revolution to the brands

One would expect a corporate plan called "Vision 2030," looking 11 years ahead through wildly tumultuous times, to involve great change and numerous forks in numerous roads. According to Automobile's breakdown of Volkswagen's path forward, though, the plans contain some lurid potential surprises. The ultimate aim is return on investment, and that means ruthless reorganization of a conglomerate with eight primary car brands, two car sub-brands, and Ducati motorcycles. The first two Vision 2030 cornerstones Automobile mentions are near boilerplate: Production network restructuring, and "streamlining of key technologies." The latter two are the ones that could upend what we know as the Volkswagen Group: focusing on the Group's core brands — meaning Audi, Porsche, and VW — and transitioning to EVs, autonomy, and other mobility solutions. Based on the report, a quote from Audi's CTO referring to the Audi brand could cover how the Group plans to handle all of its brands: "We need to find a sustainable solution for the indefinite transition period until EVs eventually take over." The boutique divisions adjacent to carmaking, Ducati and Italdesign, look likely to be spun off. For the halo car brands — Bentley, Bugatti, and Lamborghini — apparently shareholders want double-digit returns on investment, and the trio doesn't have long to hit the target. One eyebrow raiser is when the report states, "Bugatti is tipped to be gifted to [ex-VW Group Chairman] Ferdinand Piech." Piech fathered the Veyron during his tenure at VW, and it was thought he commissioned the La Voiture Noire, but he's lately stepped so far back from VW that he sold all his shares in the Group. Automobile quoted a senior strategist as saying of money-losing Bentley, "Why invest on a backward-looking enterprise when you can support a trendsetter? A proud history and excellent craftmanship alone don't cut it anymore." We guess no one at Ferrari, McLaren, or even Porsche got that memo. Bentley is reportedly close to being put in time out, and if brand CEO Adrian Hallmark can't right the Crewe ship, the hush-hush Plan B is to prop the Flying B up enough to lure a buyer. As for Lamborghini, caught between two masters at Audi and Porsche, even record-breaking numbers at the Italian supercar maker barely staved off sacrilege. It's said that VW brand CEO Herbert Diess considered putting a 5.0-liter Porsche V8 into the Aventador successor.