Porsche America Sent Soda Cups To Germany And Told Them 'Your Cupholders Have To Handle These'

A former employee of Porsche Cars North America is taking questions today in a Reddit "Ask Me Anything." Redditor Analytic_Geek is answering a number of questions on the innerworkings of the sports car maker from Stuttgart, and there were a few that caught our eye.

First off, just so we have it in writing one more time, it's pronounced Poor-sha, not Porsh:

The family always used two syllables for their name.

Secondly, Porsche employees do receive a pretty great discount on cars:

It was dependent on your level but at the time it was a flat discount off the MSRP maxed to not trigger income tax plus a monthly subsidy on your lease. All told I was paying just over 200 a month while I worked there. When I quit I had to buy out the lease to keep the car. I took a 5 year loan and paid $535 a month to keep it.

But what really caught our eye was how PCNA dictated cupholder design after the 996 generation 911 and 986 Boxster were equipped with pretty useless ones:

Cupholders were introduced in the 996 and 986 versions in the late 90's. They just didn't get it as you are not supposed to drink while you are driving. The initial cupholders sucked too. When they were designing the Cayenne we collected a ton of cups from fast food and gas stations plus coffee cups and mailed them to Germany and said your holders have to handle all of these.

This leads us to a thought: Perhaps the obsession with cupholder design was the beginning of Porsche's move away from being a sole sports car company to one that also makes luxury cars.

(Hat Tip to vic06!)

Photo Credit: Damian Morys Photo via flickr