20 years of the Cayenne - The "third Porsche" - a great success story

Ferry Porsche predicted it back in 1989: "If we built an off-road vehicle to our quality specifications, and it said Porsche on the front, it would sell." He was to be proven right. Since 2002, the Cayenne has been one of the mainstays of the automaker's global success. In the 1990s, Porsche had to make far-reaching decisions to secure the sports car manufacturer's long-term success. At the beginning of the decade, the company was in one of the biggest economic crises in its history: it was in the red and delivered only 23,060 cars in the 1991/92 fiscal year. With the Boxster, introduced in 1996, Porsche began to maneuver its way out of this slump. But it quickly became clear to management that the legendary 911 and the new mid-engine model alone would not be able to lead the company into a secure future. Plans for "the third Porsche" began to mature, even though the segment was not immediately defined. Still in 1999, the decision was made in Zuffenhausen in favor of "Made in Germany" and a new production facility was built in Leipzig, which was officially inaugurated in August 2002. The VW counterpart, the Touareg, was produced at the VW plant in Bratislava, Slovakia. The painted bodywork for the Cayenne was also supplied from there, with final assembly taking place in Saxony. Both the first and second model generations of the Cayenne - known internally as E1 and E2 - came off the production line in Leipzig and later also in Osnabrück. With the launch of the third generation (E3) in 2017, Porsche moved all Cayenne production to Bratislava to create additional capacity in Leipzig for the Panamera sports sedan and Macan compact SUV.