Browsing YT this morning, I came upon a short clip about the 1994 Porsche C88, a model I was completely oblivious to.

The C88 (which doesn't feature any Porsche badging!) was a compact 4 door saloon, it appears to be of a similar size to the type of supermini based saloons popular in various countries like China and Russia.

After doing a little research, I found out that the design was in response to an invitation from the Chinese government for car manufacturers to put forward design proposals for the domestic market. One (out of two I believe) prototype resides at Porsche's Stuttgart museum.

The response from China to the C88 was not altogether surprising given what we now know of their attitude toward design copyright(!). According to the Porsche Museum director, the Chinese government said, "Thank you very much, took the designs for free, and if you look at Chinese car designs now, you can see many details of our C88 in them"

Porsche also tried to drum up interest for the car in India, but to no avail.

It may seem odd to people now that Porsche would get involved in something like this. But it needs to be remembered that back then Porsche was in a pretty perilous financial position, so it probably seemed like a good opportunity to get some cash in the coffers!. The Boxter, which would start to turn things round for the company, was still a couple of years away from production. And the Cayenne, which would really get the money flowing in, still 8 years away.

Here are a few pics:

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