Spot the difference: Porsche has a fancy new badge design
This is the new Porsche crest, and if you’re not quite up to speed on your knowledge of German sportscar badges, some explanation may be required. This is going to get... exciting.
The top of the crest has been widened with the bottom narrowed. Porsche reckons this makes the whole thing ‘more dynamic’ and sharper. There’s a slightly wider bevel around the outside of the new design, while the whole thing gets a smoothed background – well, other than the red stripes with their new honeycomb structure.
There’s new Porsche lettering up top, and the Stuttgart lettering has been picked out in black above the newly-styled horse. The antlers are slimmer now too, with more space between them in their groups of three. Oh, and the whole thing is actually a new shade of gold too, which in some lights looks decidedly like rose gold.
“Everything different but still consistent,” is how Porsche itself describes the changes. It was never going to be radical, was it?
Still, the whole process took three years of design for the Style Porsche team to replace the crest that was last updated in 2014. In fact, Porsche likes to freshen things up every decade or so, and the crest – which was drawn by Franz Xaver Reimspieß and first used in 1952 – was also altered in 1954, 1963, 1973, 1994 and 2008.
“Key to the success of the Porsche brand is that we have an understanding that we need continuous development of everything – whether that’s a design language or even our design principles, they have to be adjusted and modified continuously,” says Michael Mauer, Vice President Style Porsche.
“And that’s the same when we’re talking about the crest. Getting the design approval for a new 911 is sometimes an interesting process, so you can imagine that the discussions surrounding the crest are even more intensive.”
And Porsche is well aware that lots of manufacturers are eschewing old-school logos in the digital world, replacing them with just stylised text that acts as a badge. Not here though. “There are not so many brands any more with the crest,” says Mauer. “We believe in this. For us it’s an important symbol and we are convinced that for our brand it’s the right thing to do and is supporting our identity.”
And so to the question everyone will be asking – the first car that the new crest will appear on is the all-new Panamera which will arrive later this year. Other models will gradually follow, and you’ll still be able to buy previous iterations of the crest from Porsche Classic.