New Delhi: Porsche’s new boss, Michael Leiters, of course, has a barrage of things to take care of, as he arrives at Zuffenhausen when things are a bit tricky. Year-over-year sales have declined for the second consecutive year, down 10 per cent in 2025 after a 3 per cent decline in 2024. The brand is struggling significantly in China, where demand has declined by double digits for three consecutive years.
The former McLaren CEO has stepped into the position of Oliver Blume, shortly following the company’s making several major decisions. Not just the Macan crossover getting an ICE replacement, even the Boxster and Cayman sports cars are, with the three models set to be available beside their EV counterparts.
Further, the three-row SUV will be coming with a combustion engine rather than as an EV-only model as had been planned originally.
The EV Cayenne is just coming out to join the ICE version, and this dual strategy might extend to another model as well. A report from Autocar claims that Porsche’s boss is evaluating folding the Panamera and Taycan lineups into just one model line. Merging the two nameplates would bring significant savings when Porsche needs capital to engineer a big array of new models, while fighting the low sales numbers.
How Porsche’s saloon restructuring could pan out
Porsche has built the Panamera nameplate for almost two decades, and might be more likely to survive
For a long time, the Panamera and Tayca have co-existed, one for the ICE and the other for their EC customers. They could now have their roads cross each other, as a unified model that might share more hardware in place of continuing as two separate cars. It remains unclear as to which name the new model will take, though Panamera might look more sensible, as the ICE powertrain car has been here for almost two decades.
For Porsche, the Taycan holds less weight for customers than the Panamera, and the German knows this just too well. Global sales numbers show Taycan demand is falling amidst fierce competition in the EV sector. This happens to be even more true in China, where domestic carmakers are rolling out tech-laden models that are way cheaper.
The brand name, though, is stronger, but that has favoured Porsche only by so much. Local buyers are increasingly seeing that homegrown products are better to heed to. 2025 saw Taycan’s life’s lowest sales number turn in, with 16,339 units sold globally. In 2024, this was 20,836, which was half of the 40,629 units sold in 2023.
While it is unlikely that the Panamera and Taycan nameplate will be replaced with a new one, with Porsche unlikely to abandon a brand they have spent decades building. Investing in the electric Panamera, an EV luxury car, might not be where the brand wants to go at present. Porsche most recently has assured their ICE fanbase that the V8 engine will remain in the Panamera well into the 2030s.