The Porsche crest is an icon, and has been since it was introduced in 1952. But it has not been static through all the years, with several subtle updates that changed a few elements. Hand a few of these historic badges to a passerby and they’re like to act out the “It’s the same image” meme from “The Office” right in front of you. It doesn’t help much that the about-to-be-replaced crest and the new one that marks the brand’s 75th anniversary are virtually interchangeable—which is new? Which is old? Who, really, could tell, unless we (by way of Porsche’s quite detailed information) illuminated the issue?
If you spotted the new logo out of the two above right away, congratulations, and how many Porsches do you currently own? For everyone else, the main difference is a bolder “STUTTGART” above the rampant horse in the middle of the crest, a feature that has been present on every crest in various states of prominence. The other differences are subtle but you don’t exactly need a microscope to see them. The deer antlers (which, of course, are cribbed from the crest of Wütemberg-Hohenzollern—but you probably already knew that) now rest on a brushed rather than pebbled surface, as does the area around “PORSCHE.” The red bars get a honeycomb texture. The horse’s shape changes slightly, and it doesn’t exactly look pleased about the changes.
Porsche’s aim was to modernize the logo, and it’s successful. The loss of the pebbled texture is sure to rankle some Porsche superfans but the new logo is cleaner and sleeker, in our eyes, than the slightly fussy previous crest. Nor does it change the basic at-a-glance recognizability. This still looks like a Porsche crest, not an abstraction or reimagining of one. We think purists will learn to accept it—no one’s forcing them to retrofit these badges to their cars—since it retains all the requisite elements and themes. And, Porsche points out, you can still buy replacement badges of any of the previous styles.
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