Porsche Is Cutting 13,000 Jobs While Planning A $574,000 Supercar, And That's Not As Contradictory As It Sounds

Cutting Nearly A Fifth Of Your Workforce While Building A New Flagship Isn’t A Contradiction — It’s A Strategy

Porsche’s situation right now is genuinely stark: a disastrous over-commitment to electric vehicles, a serious downturn in China, and a reported additional 4,100 job cuts on top of 9,000 already committed — bringing the total to 13,100, roughly a fifth of the company’s entire workforce, by 2035. And in the middle of that retrenchment, the company is reportedly developing a flagship supercar with an engine layout it’s never put in a road car before.

The Engine Choice Is Genuinely Unprecedented

Porsche has built eight-cylinder boxer engines before, but strictly for race cars — never a production road car. Internally referred to as the S1, this new flagship reportedly breaks from Porsche’s flat-six identity entirely. That’s a significant departure for a brand whose entire enthusiast reputation is built around the flat-six configuration, and it signals CEO Michael Leiters wants this car to be a genuine statement rather than an incremental update to an existing formula.

The RUF Coincidence Is Worth Noting, Even Without a Direct Link

RUF unveiled its own 4.8-liter twin-turbocharged eight-cylinder boxer just months ago, making over 1,000 hp and 738 lb-ft. There’s no confirmed connection between the two engines, but the timing is a genuinely interesting coincidence — either flat-eight engineering knowledge is circulating more broadly in the Porsche-adjacent tuning world right now, or this is simply parallel development happening independently. Either way, it suggests the flat-eight layout is having a real moment.

$574,000 Is A Deliberate Positioning Choice

Reportedly sharing design similarities with the 911 but priced around €500,000 ($574,000), this S1 would sit well above anything currently in Porsche’s lineup. That’s Leiters explicitly doubling down on exclusivity and combustion performance at the exact moment the rest of the industry is chasing volume and electrification — a genuinely contrarian bet, but one that plays to what’s traditionally made Porsche’s halo models desirable in the first place.

Leiters’ Production Targets Reveal The Real Strategy

Here’s the number that actually explains everything: Leiters reportedly wants annual production down to roughly 200,000 vehicles, a sharp reduction from predecessor Oliver Blume’s push toward 350,000-400,000. That’s not a company retreating out of weakness — it’s a deliberate strategic pivot back toward scarcity and exclusivity as the core value proposition, with the job cuts and the ultra-expensive flagship supercar functioning as two sides of the exact same coin.

My Take

Porsche cutting a fifth of its workforce while simultaneously developing its most expensive, most mechanically distinctive flagship in decades isn’t a contradiction — it’s Leiters (fresh off running McLaren, a brand that lives entirely on scarcity and exclusivity) applying that exact playbook to Porsche. Fewer cars, sold at genuinely higher margins, to a smaller and more committed enthusiast base. Whether Porsche’s broader customer base and dealer network can actually absorb that kind of volume reduction without real pain is the open question — but the strategic logic behind the flagship supercar itself, arriving alongside this retrenchment rather than despite it, makes complete sense.

Would an eight-cylinder Porsche flagship actually change how you think about the brand’s identity, or does that break something fundamental about what makes a Porsche a Porsche? I’m genuinely torn on this one.