One thing you usually don’t want to do if you’re making cars is discontinue one of your best sellers without having an immediate direct replacement ready to go. Yet, that’s sort of what’s happening with the Porsche Macan. While the electric model is alive and well, the combustion-powered variant is living on borrowed time, and thanks to a quarterly investor call, we now know how little time’s left.
Back around the turn of the millennium, Porsche realized something: its sports car customers were also buying SUVs, and those SUVs weren’t Porsches. Launching the Cayenne not only dramatically boosted sales but also unlocked a new market and provided margins wide enough to help justify the continued development of sports cars. In 2014, Porsche decided to do it again in a smaller segment, and the resulting Macan was a runaway success.
Last year, combustion-powered Macans made up nearly a quarter of Porsche’s U.S. sales despite being a decade-old platform. It’s received updates over the years from revised styling to updated powertrains, but fundamentally, it’s still on the same bones and is still a key model for Porsche.
Mind you, we’ve known that the current iteration wouldn’t be a key model forever. Partly due to its age, the gasoline-powered Macan isn’t compliant with Europe’s GSR2 safety and cybersecurity regulations, so it’s been off sale in its homeland for a while, leaving the electric model with big shoes to fill. We now seem to have a rough date on when it will ride off into the sunset altogether, and it’s happening soon.
As Porsche CFO Jochen Breckner told investors on Wednesday, “Production will be stopped in summer 2026, and during the last month that we have, we (will) produce as much as we can.” Basically, order books are likely to close soon, but there will be a stockpile of inventory. This isn’t an uncommon tactic in the car industry; it happens all the time during model changeovers, and automakers have been known to go this route after discontinuing a model. Mitsubishi stockpiled Mirages, for example.
A replacement Macan you can fill with fuel is in development, but we’ll be waiting a bit for its arrival. Right now, Porsche’s targeting a 2028 launch for this second-generation model, which means that even in an ideal scenario, there’s going to be a gap. How long of a gap? That depends on market appetite along with how many run-out combustion Macans Porsche plans to make, although steering customers toward an alternative may prove tricky.
Remember that electric Macan I mentioned earlier? It drives well and offers huge customization, but it has several forces working against it. The first is cost, with the cheapest electric Macan carrying a base price some $14,900 higher than the least expensive combustion-powered variant. Want your electric Macan to have all-wheel drive? You’re now looking at an $18,600 premium.
At the same time, U.S. incentives for EVs got dramatically worse over the past year. While the high MSRP of an electric Macan meant it didn’t qualify for tax rebates when purchased, buyers used to be able to save a few grand if they leased. It’s no huge surprise then that combustion-powered Macans outsold Macan EVs in America last year roughly two to one. Considering America is one of Porsche’s largest markets, the potential revenue loss from the discontinuation of the combustion-powered Macan is huge.
This could be an especially large short-term problem when you consider that Porsche’s finances haven’t been the strongest lately. Through the first quarter of 2026, Porsche’s profit after tax shrank to €391 million from €518 million over the equivalent period in 2025. Considering how the first quarter of 2023 resulted in after-tax profit of €1.4 billion, things are looking a little shaky over in Stuttgart. A new 718 sports car and a flagship SUV above the Cayenne are on the horizon, but given the delays with the former, timing isn’t certain.
Naturally, I’ve reached out to Porsche Cars North America for a local perspective and will update you as soon as I hear more. For now, though, Porsche’s squeezed period looks like it will continue to get tighter before it gets better. Also, if you still want to order a combustion-powered Macan, you might want to do that soon.
Top graphic image: Porsche
Looked at 2025s sales numbers and honestly I don’t think it will be so bad as its being portrayed : 45,367 Electric Macan sold vs 38,961 ICE Macan in 2025. They wont have an ICE until 2028, but it just means the used market will go bananas for them and anyone with them will see pretty slow depreciation on them for a spell until 2028 rolls round I’d wager for those with the latest model years.
Ah yes, the Stellantis method. I hear that has worked well for them.
I’m a little surprised they’re rolling the dice like they are on this, but at the same time Porsche wants absolutely nothing to do with the sorts of undesirables who can stretch their budgets to afford leasing or financing their “entry level” $70,000 car. I’m assuming the replacement will be dramatically more expensive. Hell it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they pushed the replacement into Cayenne territory price and size wise and nudged the Cayenne out in the process to force people to buy whatever the grotesque new flagship SUV is going to be.
That would basically increase the entry point to any Porsche at $80,000ish and entry into their large SUV at, I don’t know…$120,000ish? The finance guys can certainly make a “line go UP!!!!” case with that approach, and Porsche can continue pushing into the ultra-luxury realm. As I’ve said I few times, I think it’s a riskier proposition than they do and that Porsche should have a model that’s at least on the edge of attainable for regular people….but there’s never been a better time to be wealthy than right now, and I’d assume the sorts of people buying mid spec’d Macans can be coaxed into parting ways with six figures without too much trouble.
Also where the hell is the depreciation on the Macan EV?! I’d consider being the second owner of one but they’re somehow barely depreciating despite being EVs, and not particularly impressive ones at that….
The biggest issue with the macan EV is that it costs as much as a Cayenne but is smaller and looks worse than anything else Porsche makes. It’s a good vehicle but price-wise it’s completely a non-starter.
Aka, the one someone actually owns when they just tell you they have a Porsche and you mentally picture a 911 or 718
Discontinuing the ICE Macan was also a bad idea for Europe…
Thank the EU for that. It doesn’t meet current regs and apparently can’t be made to in a cost-effective e way.
I guess they thought it could be entirely replaced by the Macan EV, without realising that it was Porsche’s most affordable (and practical) car and that EV are not really a mass-market proposition on the southern half of Europe…
The Macan was too affordable and that’s not what Porsche execs want to see.
The EU was forcing everyone down the EV path until reality bit them in the rear.