Beckham’s Back In Business With A New Rolls Royce

We weren’t really sure what David Beckham’s plan was when he decided to kick his Rolls Royce Drophead Coupe to the curb but from the looks of it he’s decided to stick with Rolls Royce.

We’ve spotted Beckham with the car a couple times — first the whole family was out for lunch and you can see the car parked across the street and just recently David was spotted at the gas station having an attendant wash the windshield. Some families go from three to four kids and breakdown for the minivan but when you’re David and Victoria Beckham you go from a Rolls Royce Coupe to a four door more practical Rolls Royce Ghost instead.

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New Porsche CUV called Macan, not Cajun after all, Porsche Announces Macan Crossover for 2013,

The drawing above depicts the 2014 Porsche Macan, the compact crossover formerly known as Cajun. We’ve extensively covered this long-anticipated baby Porsche SUV, but here’s a recap: The Macan will share its architecture with the Audi Q5 and slot into the Porsche SUV lineup—yes, the company now has a lineup of SUVs—below the Cayenne. It likely will use engines pulled from Audi’s parts bin, but as you can see from the design sketch Porsche released today, won’t share its look with any four-ringer.

The styling is hardly shocking—it strongly resembles the Cayenne—and it looks very similar to a rendering we published some months ago. So why the name change? Apparently “Macan” sounds good in many languages—it means “tiger” in Indonesian—and, at least according to Porsche, “evoke[s] positive associations.” While Porsche’s small SUV was never officially named “Cajun”—as we pointed out when Porsche green-lit the model—it had a nice ring to it and it matched the larger Cayenne’s spicy-sounding moniker. (The new name makes us think of macaws. And pecans.) Regardless, Porsche’s high-riding tiger will begin rolling off an assembly line in Leipzig, Germany, in 2013 before going on sale as a 2014 model. We expect the Macan to debut at an auto show later this year. In the meantime, check out Porsche’s uplifting teaser video for the Macan below.

Stuttgart • Porsche has named its newest upcoming sport-ute not the Cajun, as was expected, but the Macan. The name Macan is derived from the Indonesian word for tiger and, says the automaker, combines suppleness, power, fascination and dynamics — “core characteristics” of the new SUV.

“The Macan combines all sports car characteristics with the benefits of a SUV and is a genuine Porsche,” says Bernhard Maier, executive vice-president sales and marketing of Porsche AG. “The name of a new Porsche has to fit with the brand, sound good in very many languages and dialects and evoke positive associations.”

As the fifth Porsche model line, the Macan is a central plank of Strategy 2018, by which the sports car manufacturer will expand its model portfolio. Porsche says it intends the Macan to emulate the success of the Cayenne. The SUV will start coming off the production lines in Leipzig in 2013. To that end, the site is being expanded into a fully-fledged production plant, including body assembly line and paint shop — with 500-million euro of investment, it is one of the biggest building projects in Porsche’s corporate history.

According to Porsche, word names have concrete connections with corresponding models and their characteristics: “The name Boxster describes the combination of boxer engine and roadster, Cayenne stands for sharpness, the Cayman is snappy and agile and a Panamera is more than a Gran Tourismo, capable also of winning the Carrera Panamericana long-distance race.”

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Porsche Announces Macan Crossover for 2013

Like when Mercedes Benz stepped foot the SUV market with their ML model, many scratched their heads when sports car maker Porsche entered the fray with the Cayenne. Well a decade later the Cayenne is one of Porsche’s better selling vehicles in the US anyway.

With that experience under their belt and the increasingly tight CAFE standards to come, Porsche has plans for a smaller crossover that will share its architecture with the Audi Q5. To be called the Porsche Macan, the company has released a sketch of what the vehicle will look like.

Porsche says the the name Macan is derived from the Indonesian word for tiger. They hope the moniker will translate characteristics of “suppleness, power, fascination and dynamic” to the new crossover that has undeniable Porsche styling DNA and appears to almost be a perfectly scaled down Cayenne.

“The Macan combines all sports car characteristics with the benefits of a SUV and is a genuine Porsche”, said Bernhard Maier, Executive Vice President Sales and Marketing of Porsche AG. “The name of a new Porsche has to fit with the brand, sound good in very many languages and dialects and evoke positive associations.”

Porsche says the Macan is a centerpiece of their “Strategy 2018” plan. Porsche intends the Macan to emulate the success of the Cayenne in sales when it starts production in 2013. There’s no word yet on what will power the new Macan, but we would suggest that they will be similar to what its platform mate Audi Q5 has.

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Posted in: Announces,Crossover,Macan,Porsche