10 Cars That Porsche Had A Hand In Creating

Whether or not you ‘get’ its cars, there’s no denying that Porsche is one of the most accomplished car manufacturers on earth. It’s little surprise, then, that plenty of other companies have looked to Stuttgart to get a leg up with their own cars.

In fact, Porsche has a whole subsidiary you might not have known about, Porsche Engineering, which primarily serves as an engineering consultancy that outsources work to other companies. It once even built a whole car of its own, the C88, which was a concept for a family car for a rapidly growing Chinese market.

That car didn’t end up happening, but these 10 (well, nine plus a bike) did, and all of them have Porsche’s fingerprints on them somewhere along the way.

Audi RS2

Probably the best known of all the Porsches that aren’t Porsches, the car that kicked off Audi’s rich history of building estates that’ll make your dog sick was co-developed from the word go by its sporty VW Group stablemate.

Porsche thoroughly overhauled Audi’s five-cylinder turbocharged engine, and developed the RS2’s braking and suspension systems. It was even assembled at Porsche’s plant in Stuttgart, and wore some Porsche cosmetic bits: the door mirrors and five-spoke wheels were both borrowed from the 964 Turbo.

Mercedes 500E

Before it had put together the RS2, though, Porsche’s Stuttgart factory had been assembling a car for the company’s friendly crosstown rivals, Mercedes. The 500E was the sporty range-topper of the W124 – predecessor to the modern-day E-Class – which Porsche fettled the suspension, chassis and 5.0-litre V8 engine of.

To accommodate its wider track, the 500E was fitted with subtly flared arches, panels that were fabricated by Porsche and fitted to standard W124 bodies. In total, the cars had to make the journey across Stuttgart twice during the convoluted production process, but the result is one of the ultimate lessons in understated coolness.

Renault Clio V6

The original Phase 1 version of the Renault Clio V6 was a bit of a handful. Something about cramming a massive 3.0-litre, 227bhp V6 into the middle of a tiny supermini and sending all the power to the back.

Despite that, the facelifted Phase 2 car had even more grunt, with 252bhp. Some of that increase came via a tweaked Bosch ECU, which was calibrated by none other than Porsche. Only a small hand, then, but a hand nonetheless.

Lada Samara

In a time when Porsche sat on the western side of a divided Germany, it had an unlikely hand in a car produced in the Soviet Union: the VAZ-2108, better known in the west as the Lada Samara. The small family car's top 1.5-litre engine had cylinder heads designed by the German manufacturer.

This was as far as the partnership went for road cars, but it was taken a whole lot further in the realms of motorsport: for the 1990 Dakar Rally, a Samara-based prototype was developed that featured a 3.6-litre flat-six from a 911 and the four-wheel drive system from none other than the 959.

SEAT Ibiza

In 1984, SEAT wasn’t yet a fully-owned subsidiary of VW, but it had entered a partnership with the German manufacturer. That means that while the original Ibiza was one of the only cars developed by the Spanish brand as an independent company (although it was still distantly related to the Fiat Ritmo), the VW Group still had a hand in it.

Specifically, the first-gen Ibiza’s 1.2-, 1.5- and 1.7-litre engines and accompanying gearboxes were co-developed with Porsche. The car wears this fact proudly on its sleeve – pop the bonnet, and you’ll see ‘System Porsche’ stamped onto the cam cover.

Vauxhall Zafira

The safe, sensible first-generation Vauxhall Zafira people carrier is about as far as it’s possible to get from most of Porsche’s cars (until the turbocharged GSi turned up, anyway).

However, while most of the seven-seater’s oily bits came from Opel, much of the design, including the Zafira’s clever Flex 7 seating system, was handled by Porsche. One was even on display at the Porsche Museum for a while, which must have been a disappointment for punters turning up and hoping to see a Le Mans-winning 962.

Ford Mondeo ST220

We could have used anything with Ford’s Duratec V6 for this entry, including the Aston Martin DB9, whose V12 was basically two of them welded together. But we quite like the ST220, so here it is.

The Duratec was first launched in 1994 as a 2.5-litre, and grew to 3.0 litres for its use in the ST220 and other cars like the Noble M12. The initial design work for it was contracted out to Porsche Engineering, which resulted in a main bearing girdle similar to the one on the Porsche 928’s V8. Break out that piece of trivia next time you’re at the pub and see how quickly people leave.

Chevrolet Epica

On sale in Britain for a few short years at the tail end of the 2000s, the Chevrolet Epica was – and there’s no way around this – a catastrophic flop. Turns out not many people in Britain wanted a big Daewoo saloon with an American badge, even if it was nearly as big as a 5 Series and only cost as much as a mid-range Ford Focus.

One of the stranger things about the Epica was that its top engine in the UK was a 2.0-litre straight-six, mounted transversely and driving the front wheels. Guess who co-developed this otherwise utter obscurity of an engine?

Subaru Legacy B4 Blitzen

This high-performance version of the third-gen Subaru Legacy was only sold in Japan, and it packed quite a punch. Its 2.0-litre turbocharged flat-four made a quoted 276bhp – this was in the days of the gentlemen's agreement, remember, so who knows how much it was really kicking out – and it would hit 60mph in a shade over five seconds. It even had a model-specific limited-slip diff.

Surely, with its own boxer engine expertise, Porsche had a hand in developing that snorty engine? Erm, no, actually. The mechanicals were all Subaru’s own work. Rather, it was the Blitzen’s distinctive bodykit that was done by Porsche, specifically its Porsche Design subsidiary that you better know for selling very expensive, rather ugly trainers.

Image: 160SX, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Harley-Davidson V-Rod

Do not adjust your computer screen. We had to do a bit of Googling on what this thing is, but apparently it’s called a *checks notes* motorbike. Specifically, it’s a Harley-Davidson V-Rod, a big, powerful cruiser designed for going quickly in a straight line and not much else. It’s sort of like a two-wheeled muscle car.

Once again, it’s the engine we’re interested in: it’s a big, lumpy 1.1-litre V-twin, and Porsche had a big hand in its development, both because Harley was short on engineering personnel at the time and to help refine it for European noise regulations that were coming in around the time of the V-Rod’s 2002 launch.