Sunday April 28, 1996: THE ROAD TO CHINA; Porsche Undressed
Traveling by car in Beijing can make a visitor long for an eastbound lane on the Long Island Expressway on a Friday afternoon in August. Soon this joy of a ride will be available to citizens throughout China, as the country closes in on its goal of putting a million cars a year on the road by 2010. Toward that end, the People's Republic has asked manufacturers around the world to submit designs to kick-start its own auto industry. Among those who have is Porsche, but what the venerable German company is offering is a horsepower of a different color from the low-down, zillion-dollar road eaters that the Hamptons lovers drive. No airfoils, ostrich-skin seats and radar detectors on these babies. The potential Chinese model is a sedate $6,000 sedan, code-named C88 and intended as much for cargo as passengers.
Porsche hopes that its prototype will help it become one of the three auto makers eventually chosen. There's a precedent here: Ferdinand Porsche, a founder of the company, was involved in the design of the original "people's" car, the Volkswagen Beetle.
-text from NYtimes
-more German info
-UCP discussion concerning this car
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Originally Posted by sutton4481
