Porsche crest logo evolution - historians, anoraks, general enthusiasts of the marque

[911MRP]

There is a neat graphic that shows the evolution of the Shell logo but I've not seen a similar one for Porsche. Unless I've missed it? Surpising for a knowledgable enthusiastic community that has been known to ...err...obsess over small details and markings (guilty) given that the corporate crest is pretty fundamental to Porsche marque. If appears in all manner of places not just the obvious bonnet badges: Literature, product, clothing, marketing trinkets and other Automobilia, etc etc

Is there an equivalent or even better Porsche crest chronology like this Shell example:


If not probaly this forum has the collective knowledge and breadth of old reference material to build it. Design of crest used by the company at defined points in time is quite informative when looking at things puporting to be old original. Possibly better shot at it on forum than just asking today's Porsche marketing incumbents given some of the attention to detail in recreating classic stuff

I know bonnet crests have been discussed at length but question I'm posing here is broader. Became slightly intrigued when two original otherwise identical vintage Porsche clothing items from early 70s circa I own that shown in the ~73 catalogue had different crest design so that marketing product evidently spanned a crest redesign by Porsche. Seems to be late in or after 73 in that case.Probaly one of many Porsche crest design changes over the years.

Companies marketeers are very controlling about such brand graphical representation in my somewhat limited experience and suspect Porsche were no less particular about portraying their crest:
- Is there any documentation or graphical specs among old literature as they probably had to issue guidance on design to parties wanting to use it graphically?
- What changes happened to this Porsche crest, and when?
- What triggered these crest redesigns, just marketing making regular tweaks to update the image or significant corporate history milestones like KG>AG requiring something to mark the change?

Fot the time being suggest just the Porsche crest itself might be a big enough topic to understand in its own right rather than straying to marketing image word PORSCHE, VW-Porsche or Porsche-Audi alliance variation of their branding imagery.

Changes probaly most immediately evident in coloured versions of crest but might be spotted in their two tone : black and white , maroon and white variants.

Old good provenance references help so interesting pictures or scans if available please

Anyone already know and willing to share this Porsche crest design evolution history already?

Steve

[Rico]

How about this....

[911T1971]

Imo the firm was just a small family run business, far smaller than other (car) brands and "marketing" was not priority. They did something they felt is "right" and hoped that it worked out. It did and did very well until the late eighties, when they were almost bancrupt, mainly because they never managed to change their product(s) which then were simply outdated or less sought after, selling in low numbers on a production line then totally outdated.

Basicially they kept their design concept untouched until the late eighties.

By the early nineties however international branding, customer targeting, trademark and copyrights were adopted and more and more applied to Porsche literature, press, dealership architecture, car development etc, ie product marketing in which the US were leading and which were applied at much earlier stage for about any commercial product, including cars. (In car design, this not makes automaticially a "better" car, often its quite the opposite as common taste stipulated by marketing research often leads to bland results, even it might sell better ie in higher numbers, the main aim of what marketing is meant for).
And as it was the case with branding, the products of Porsche changed too, japanised/Toyota production knowledge was applied to building cars, factory parts storage "on site" was exchanged with "just in time" delivery, engines were all watercooled and entry-level Boxster cars shared parts with the 996, while a SUV was essentially a luxury VW Touareg. This process did save the company as we know today, otherwise it would have been sold to Mercedes or VW, as it was speculated in 1992/93.

Butzi's own design firm, founded in 1972ish after he left the firm, held the sole marketing rights for "Porsche Design" - quite a good brand name - and got recently sold to the Porsche firm, which is now using it as a brand name for all of its merchatising articles, whatever it might be.

The Porsche crest on cars received little changes, except size and a color change in the seventies, as seen above, the biggest change was in Graphic Design: printing it in color on all press and publicity items and adjusting lately to a "3D effect" w printed shadows, as most brands today do.

From the early 60ies until the early eighties, Porsche America/US importers printed, designed and marketed their own sales literature and it did differ from RoW literature, which was designed by the factory itself. It was only in the 80ies when all press and literature started to look identicial, but even then each market printed or designed sometimes press products on its own. (One reason was that many US dealers, traditionally the biggest market, had a long standing tradition in selling Porsche and were able to resist to be incorporated in Porsche factory "guidelines" how items and even dealerships had to be designed. As long as those dealers were selling cars the factory did not interfere too much, this stopped only when an overall economic downfall happened in tdhe early 90ies, urging the factory to finally streamlining its way how to promote worldwide its products.)

By the time VW bought the brand (Porsche tried first the opposite having made more profits from stock option transactions than from selling cars...) the Porsche firm applied and integrated all rules how today a luxury car maker needs to sell and market its products, its new owner needed nothing to add or teach. Only that now the interchangeabilty of mechanicial parts on Porsche cars will increase, mainly with those from Audi (once run by Ferdinand Piech).

Ps. What the original poster suggested that in 1973 was a slight difference in Porsche Crests within an article was imo probably due to multiple suppliers manufacturing the same item but slightly different, or a mid-year change of supplier, as these slight changes did nothing for selling. Plus, photo content of literature back then was not always yearly updated, sometimes showing items (or cars) from a previous year, even the newer product was in the store.

Ps. The Porsche-Audi marketing campaign, which existed only for the US is a rather interesting story, as it combines essentially products from two separate companies, sharing no technicial or contractial connections (unless VW-Porsche). In the early eighties, Porsche wanted to stop this combined dealer/marketing scheme since it helped more to the image of Audi cars than the opposite, but the US dealers resisted first strongly, as it meant loosing overall sales and income.

[911MRP]

Thanks for the chart Rico hadn't seen that but also curious about crest used more widely than the bonnet badge too.

Karim, Appreciated your input, I know you have a wide selection of literature etc so can see patterns and trend in graphics used in such things that I will miss by predominantly focusing on just 72/3 era.

Steve

[mcampuzano]

Decal variations:

[911MRP]

Thanks. Interesting. Is this your own picture or a display from a factory/ other source?

Any chronology giving the era each variant was used or are they just alternative designs that were used in parallel if as suggested above control of image was relativly relaxed in early days?

Steve

[mcampuzano]

Arranged according to cars used on:

[911MRP]

Thanks. Interesting. Appreciate your follow up.

Question rather like Mike (210BHP) asked in another thread: Is the source about crests on these models/cars you shared based as these cars exist now-- many decades from new and likely to have been restored?

Or are the crests sourced from old pictures etc dating from back in the day when they were new or likley still original unrestored cars?

Restorers (even high-quality well meaning ones) change things. Historic race prep shops and in period race technicians rightly were much less fussed over these details. Some owners don't care. Factory own restorations even of their landmark and museum cars used at international events is not always historically authentic in their detail.

With this thread I'm ideally seeking to establish the basis of our evidence before chronological evolution (or random variation) of the decal crest becomes accepted as historical "fact". As more and more of these old cars get restored or other articles get thrown away small details get erased but we here on this forum we might be in a good position to understand and document it factually before it is all gone.

Thanks again for sharing this information. With the 'provenance' of each example being supplied it becomes even more helpful thread of anyone needs to see if something might be authentic for the period or even original to their car.

In the spirit of examples with potential to date it from provenance, this old crest is on the cover of a maroon spare parts list price list for importer or dealer use. It refers to Porsche of America Corporation in the parts ordering procedure steps so, presumably USA. No date but the contents are original old computer perforated-old school printout (not photocopy) and in the 170 pages there is not a single part number I've found that starts 911 leading me to think it is early relative to 900 history. It has: 900, 901, 616, 999, 905, 369, 506, 528, 644, 356, 904 plus many more besides -- but intriguingly no part with prefix 911 in 170 pages of up to 50 part line items/page.

So the historians, experts among us will no doubt able to date that from period between 900 series introduction but before the 911 part number prefix was introduced whenever that might be?



(Having dug item out just to photograph its original old crest turns out it is actually quite an interesting possibly even quite rare binder/ document given its content. Gives the ordering procedure with full parts list / description including the then suggested reatil and dealer net price of each part. Possibly deserves to be with someone with interest in earlier 900 / other P cars of that 60s time-window -- rather than gathering dust among my predominately '72/3 model year reference books.)

Any Porsche historians and experts who able to date this particular version of the crest from the binder's part number range -- this patinated old crest given item on which it is found is likley original -- it seems reasonably consistent with the version of graphical image labeled 911R above?
Steve.

[mcampuzano]

Old photos, even these crests have each several versions

[911T1971]

What we forget is that "back in the day" there wasnt such a precise info about how a crest needed to be printed exactly and slight variations were part of it.

Especially with Porsche, where half of the cars went to the US and where until 1975ish the US importers dealers printed in the US and designed their own press and literature.
Pricelist were traditionally printed by the importers and one can see they had big freedom of what and how design such a document, being it Dutch, Swiss, French, English, Belgium, Swedish or even Japanese (i have all those)

Variations in design imo were not because the factory updated every other year their design policy but because printers and graphic designers might slightly vary over the years.

I think the most accurate design came what was printed in Stuttgart/Ludwigshafen for the German market and what was designed inhouse. Not saying others product were incorrect but we should not assune, every slight change was because a design change policy was issued.

Ill contribute w photos of what I have from 63-73.