Porsche Now Lets You Create One-Off Factory Cars
Porsche has revived its Sonderwunsch program (translated: Special Wishes) to give customers the opportunity to create truly special, one-off cars in-house. But they’ll have to pay a hefty fee for the privilege.
The program is a collaboration between Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur, Porsche Tequipment, and Porsche Classic, the first of which already provides some tremendous support to customers seeking specific combinations of materials and colors. Porsche anticipates Sonderwunsch will offer about 1,000 cars per year with significant customizations but that its “Factory One-Off” branch will make only about 3-5 cars.
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That might not seem like a lot at first, but these customizations go beyond simply choosing your stitching style or custom wheels. They will potentially feature major deviations from standard models, including mechanical modifications, and customers will consult with Porsche for a whole year to determine the design and assess its feasibility before work on the car even starts.
This consultation process will cost €100,000 and include a variety of tests. For example, Porsche needs to ensure a customer’s desired materials are compatible with safety equipment or that engine swaps are technically doable. Putting a modern 911 GT3 engine into a Porsche 718 might sound like a fun idea, but there may be significant technical limitations.
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Still, if it can be done, Porsche wants to help you do it. In essence, the German automaker now offers what was once exclusively the purview of third-party tuning houses and restorers. For customers, one of the main advantages is getting to do this while benefiting from Porsche’s legendary engineering quality — and, presumably, a factory warranty.
There’s no doubt Porsche will have no shortage of people willing to shell out triple figures for the privilege of developing a one-off project car completely in-house — and this doesn’t even factor in the cost of manufacturing the actual car.
Kurt Verlin was born in France and lives in the United States. Throughout his life he was always told French was the language of romance, but it was English he fell in love with. He likes cats, music, cars, 30 Rock, Formula 1, and pretending to be a race car driver in simulators; but most of all, he just likes to write about it all. See more articles by Kurt.