Speaking of Porsches...

A friend of mine recently picked up an Alfa Romeo 147. Among the core arguments for the car were things like "It says benzina next to the fuel gage!" and that "It will be broken all the time since it's an Italian car, but it won't matter as it is so beautiful!" This sort of mindset is driven by the view that passion is enough. I contest this point by arguing the exact opposite point: passion, while needed to some extent, typically just gets you in trouble. That is not to say that passion is bad, but it cannot be the only thing. An analogy would be a relationship. While passion is crucial from the outset, if there is no other substance, no respect, no kinship, the relationship will be a short and painful one.

Porsche has been criticized by some people for being too engineered a car. They say that it lacks soul, it lacks the aforementioned passion. That it is cold and sterile. That it is too rationale. Maybe so. But there is beauty in engineering. It is backed by numbers and hard facts. But it has its own spirit, its own soul, and its pride. The engine is at the back, as it has just about always been. It is up for debate whether or not this is a good or a bad thing, but they've kept their head and have not changed their minds about it. Some may call this stubborn, but it need not be seen in such negative light: it may be also seen to be consistency and strong will, both considered to be good traits.

But in fact the discussion around passion versus engineering comes again to the question of balance. When doing analysis work on strategic questions, taking a purely quantitative approach will always result in incorrect results, because the initial numbers are always wrong and the models always lacking. But a purely qualitative approach is not any better either, as it just hangs high in the air and lacks firm numbers to back feelings with. No one will make a multi-million dollar decision based solely on gut feeling. But because mathematics is considered by many to be tedious and boring, it is often overlooked or not utilized properly. Waving hands around with qualitative analysis is a lot easier and a lot more fun than analyzing numbers, so that is too often what gets done instead.

In relationships, passion ignites the chain of events. But too often the boring things are overlooked and it is assumed that strong enough passion will conquer all. In a number of years, however, reality will hit and gravity will kick in. And at that point it would be nice to know that the ground work has been done properly and that effort need not be spent on fought on things that are not at the core: fire fighting by attempting to kill the smoke while the fire is elsewhere seldom helps with anything. Same thing with cars; the first year or two with a car might be nice and everything works. The design of the body might be nice, but when you come up between a rock and a hard place, you do want to know that the engineers have done the mathematics and that the airbags will deploy and the body will stay intact, protecting you and your significant other so that you two can continue having a passionate relationship.

And with that, I'll leave you with a two-part video about the new Porsche 911 Turbo (977), which is not only engineered, but it is engineered with passion. And it is pretty damn sexy as well... And Antti, good luck with the Alfa. And I'm sure it'll be a fun and nice car.