Hamilton Helmer

the design element as part of the mix in what wins over sports car enthusiasts.

So if you looked at a 911 in 1964 and a 911 today,

they kind of look the same, you know?

And so what did that allow Porsche to do?

It allowed to just constantly optimize the best performance features in the context of people would pay for that

you know, handling, acceleration, interior ergonomics, and the technology frontier was changing fairly rapidly.

Today, I'm just astonished at the performance you can get from a small-scale Honda that'll go 155 miles an hour.

you know, faster than a Jaguar XKE right back in my day.

And then there've been all kinds of parallel developments and other aspects, brakes, sound deadening and everything else.

And so they could constantly upgrade each generation, not having to think about the design aspect to it, but hit the performance envelope and people would pay for that.

You needed all those things, right?

And consequently, they end up with this incredibly durable business model, by far the most profitable automobile maker and devoted fans and great cars.

God, why are you interviewing me?

So, yes.

And then all of these elements like getting the PDK transmission just right, those are fixed cost investments.

And if they can spread that over a larger number of automobiles, it's lower cost.

So how many times have you seen sports cars that were quite interesting and then they just couldn't keep upgrading them to meet the grade?

I mean, think of the Toyota 2000 or an early version of Alfa Romeo or something.

Right.

And so Porsche was the one that just kept being right on that performance envelope because they were able to do all these investments.