Porsche has never once sold a front-drive vehicle since its formation in 1931. But it looks as though the company is about to commit what some fans consider the ultimate taboo by offering models with a front-drive bias by 2028.
The vehicle in question is to be the successor to the Porsche Macan, known internally as the M1. Reports have alleged that the crossover will utilize all-wheel-drive hardware sourced from Audi that prioritizes the front wheels. This is because the M1 (which may just end up being called the Macan) will be riding on the same Premium Platform Combustion (PPC) architecture found in the third-generation Audi Q5.
While the news is creating a bit of a stir online, your author isn’t ready to pen this as an outright tragedy just yet. People said the company was crazy when it started selling SUVs, only for those very models to become the brand’s best-selling products by a staggering margin.
However, Porsche seems to be pivoting to a front-biased AWD system primarily to help mitigate production costs. Since the brand is owned by Volkswagen Group, there’s often a lot of sharing between its subsidiaries. Autocar noted that the original Macan likewise received its all-wheel drive from Audi, re-tuning it to be rear-drive biased to ensure it felt like a proper Porsche. That allegedly won’t be happening with the M1, which apparently uses the Q5’s Quattro Ultra drive system without changing much.
From Autocar:
So, unlike the outgoing ICE Macan’s Porsche Traction Management set-up, which is engineered to send most of its power to the rear wheels, drive in the M1 will primarily be sent to the front axle, with the rear wheels engaging only when sensors detect impending traction loss, marking a radical shift in Porsche’s engineering philosophy.
The SUV will form part of the company’s bid to counter stalling sales and profits. The Q5 tie-up will help the new five-seater to be fast-tracked through development in response to weaker than expected demand for the electric Macan (25,884 global sales in the first half of 2025) and a general softening in the global uptake of electric cars.
Although the M1 is intended to occupy a similar market position to the first-generation Macan, it won’t be offered with an electric option. That space will continue to be filled by the Macan EV, which was launched last year.
The comprehensive rethink of Porsche’s future model line-up has been triggered by current market conditions, well-placed sources within the company have told Autocar.
Porsche has found itself in a difficult situation and the same goes for Volkswagen Group as a whole. The company invested heavily into all-electric vehicles before most other automakers and is now struggling to find homes for EVs. Meanwhile, European regulations are poised to make combustion models increasingly difficult to produce. That makes it hard to rationalize development costs on models that might be forced out of compliance and discontinued sooner than desired.
The gasoline-powered Macan was yanked from the European market in 2024 for failing to adhere to so-called “cybersecurity” requirements outlined by the EU. This also killed off the Cayman and Boxster models. However, emissions requirements remain a major concern for automakers as forthcoming combustion bans remain in play — even as regulations are being lifted in markets like the United States.
As for the front-drive bias, it’s hard to imagine the kind of people who buy Macans breaking out the pitchforks for the M1. Granted, your author has a penchant for front and all-wheel drive vehicles offering predictable understeer. But that all goes out the window when practicality is no longer a factor. All things being equal, the overseer made available via rear-wheel drive is often more fun. The question is whether the Macan’s successor will be bought by the kind of drivers that care about that.
Do we really expect to see the M1 at track days or is it more likely that most examples will never see anything crazier than semi-spirited backroad blasts? We’re guessing it’ll probably be the latter.
Porsche also needs to get this vehicle to the market as soon as possible. Regulations forced the Macan into an early grave on the home market. With its electrified counterpart not selling particularly well, the automaker needs to fill a large void in its lineup. Despite development periods often lasting five years, Porsche wants to finish the M1 in under three. To accomplish that, it needs to lean on Audi’s engineering without making substantial changes.
That likewise means we can make some educated guesses about the forthcoming model. The Audi Q5 comes with a 2.0-liter turbo hybrid pushing 201 horsepower and 251 lb-ft of torque. Those are modest figures for a sporting model, and less than the outgoing Macan, so it’s assumed that Porsche will borrow engines from one of Audi’s upcoming performance variants and/or do some performance tuning of its own — same as before.
But the Macan also occupies an interesting space on the market. While it’s expensive enough to cater to those with deeper pockets, it’s likewise affordable enough (relatively speaking) to encourage some buyers to stretch their budgets in order to say they own a Porsche. With all but the tippy top of the market signaling a strong desire for lower MSRPs and increased utility, the Macan’s successor may need to tread carefully. It should be sufficiently different from the Audi Q5 (which costs less and has historically been more practical) without inflating its own MSRP too much or forcing Porsche to spend a surplus of time prepping it for the market.
[Images: Porsche]
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