Sunday Porsche Blogging: the $1600 Porsche Phone, Is There No Substitute?

Well not to be outdone by Apple, Porsche Design has come out with a Porsche cell phone. Sadly this follows the Ferrari cell phone. Currently available in Germany, Britain and Dubai the $1600 Porsche flip phone (with camera phone and a 3-speaker MP3 player) will be available here in the US sometime next year. Will it clash with Paris' Bentley? Only time will tell. If you were diligent I bet that you could find a decent and drivable Porsche 924 automobile for the price of that cell phone. Sure you would have to put up with some indignities and at some undetermined point in the future the car would present you with a bill exceeding it's value but you can't drive Lake Shore Drive in a cell phone.

Porsche Design is not part of the automobile company although it offers products through Porsche and it's dealerships. Porsche Design was formed by 911 designer and grandson of the company's founder Butzi Porsche after the family decided to remove themselves from the management structure of the automobile and engineering company in the early 1970s. However Porsche Motorsports may want to supply this latest bit of Porsche gadgetry to their racers at circuits like Le Mans. Flying Debris noted while live-blogging the 2006 Le Mans 24 Hour race that when a class leading Porsche 911 GT3R broke down at Arnage the driver did not have a cell phone to communicate with his pit, possibly costing him the lead: "(t)hey also said that the driver was not carrying a cell phone. Yep, spend $1 million plus and get stuck on the circuit without a device that is given away for free."

Well Vodaphone and others will not be giving away the pricey Porsche phone for free but I am sure that the driver in question would have gladly paid $1600 for the use of a cell phone while surveying the beautiful French countryside at Arnage and watching the previously lapped Panoz repeatedly pass him by. Here is a video from Arnage at 3 AM during last summer's race: