The successor to the Porsche 550 gets a new date: 2017

When all is said and done, the baby Porsche will still be for the brand’s customers of this generation, contrary to what Matthias Mueller had announced months earlier; the successor to the historic Porsche 550 (551) would see the light of day in 2017, according to the opinions of some Porsche executives.

The year 2017 is not a date mentioned capriciously; rather, it is a pause after the new generation of the Panamera, the 918 Spyder and the projected 960. It seems that once all these launches are over, two years (2016-2018) will pass in which Porsche has yet to decide on a clear strategy for other models, and this is where the 551 could fit in.

As Porsche is a company that works hand in hand with Volkswagen, the plan contemplates that by 2017 the new Volkswagen platform, called MSB, could be ready. It is intended for all the group’s models to be based on the same platform of interchangeable parts, from which an almost unlimited variety of models with rear-wheel drive and front or mid-engine could be built; it is mentioned from a new Lamborghini, through the Bentley Continental, and ending with the next Porsche Panamera. Conveniently, development of the MSB platform has been placed in the hands of Porsche.

We are still talking about comments and leaks, since the reality of the 551 is that it depends on factors that are unrelated to the model itself; some vehicles in the group will have to report higher profits “before we get into a segment where the profit margin is critical,” as a senior Porsche executive has stated.

Either way, the arrival of a baby Porsche with a turbocharged four-cylinder engine is not an idea that has been left gathering dust in a drawer; it is a project that the conglomerate to which Porsche belongs has not yet buried.