Yesterday, a tech billionaire made news not for the usual insipid reasons that make most of us roll our eyes, but rather for something far more benign: a customized car. The billionaire in question this time was Mark Zuckerberg, the guy who started Facebook, bought Instagram, and gave us that weird, now-dead Metaverse virtual reality/neo-Second Life thing where nobody had legs. Well, in actual reality, Zuckerberg – who does appear to have actual legs – has had a special customized Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT stretch and made in a sort of “minivan.” I’m not sure it actually fits in to the minivan order, but I do think it’s fun, and I’m somewhat surprised to the blowback that it’s gotten online. Because if you have a problem with this build, I think you’re wrong.
Actually, I really shouldn’t be surprised about blowback. This is the internet, after all, and anyone could post about making themselves a sandwich and have a reasonable expectation there will be hordes of commenters letting them know that sandwich is the worst, most miserable thing in existence and what’s more, it’s an immoral sandwich that encapsulates everything wrong in the world now, with too much mustard. I get that.
In this case, though, I think it makes sense to defend this rich man’s car, which isn’t something I’m generally inclined to do – at least in part because they’re generally not this interesting.
Okay, first, here’s the Insta post where the car was revealed:
View this post on Instagram
So, what’s going on here is that the Zuckerberg family, which now seems to have three offspring, at least two of whom are named after cars (Maxima and Aurelia, though I can’t prove it was specifically the Nissan and Lancia cars they were named for) and that means the Zucks need something to haul a bunch of kids around in. They need a minivan, because, whether we like to admit it or not, we almost all do, at least sometimes.
So, Zuckerberg got a new Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT– the “coupé” one (it’s not really a coupé, it just has a more raked fastback) – which makes about 650 horsepower, gets to 60 in 3.1 seconds, and can go just 10 mph shy of 200 mph. You know, solid minivan-requirement specs. As a self-respecting minivan, this thing needs sliding doors, so the Cayenne was taken to West Coast Customs, who stretched the SUV and added a pair of sliding doors.
Inside, there’s a second row with captain’s chairs, and what appears to be a bench seat behind that, making this Cayenne a legitimate seven-seater, meaning there’s enough room for the whole Zuckerberg family and two more, maybe personal assistants or astrologers or whomever they like to travel with.
Response to the stretched Cayenne has been surprisingly mixed, I think. While there’s been plenty of positive takes, there’s also been a surprising amount of anger and revulsion and wrath:
I’m mostly addressing the people who seem to have an issue with the stretched Cayenne itself when I say that they’re wrong: people against it because of who Zuckerberg is or even in favor of it for who he is I’m ignoring because I just don’t care about that. Being super-into some billionaire, any of them, feels a little weird to me, anyway. No, we’re here to just talk about the car.
So, with that in mind, let’s dig in:
First, It’s Not Really A Minivan. It’s More Of A Limo
This has been brought up by a good number of people commenting in various places already, but it’s worth noting: Just stretching an SUV and adding sliding doors does not a minivan make. A minivan is about proportion! A minivan is taller in proportion to length, generally has a truncated hood, and a more box-like body. I once defined van traits as these:
 • A main, box-like body designed to maximize interior volume
• A hood-to-overall-body ratio (hood is measured from the base of the A-pillar to the front end) significantly less than most other vehicle types. That is, a van should have a relatively short hood for its body length
• A taller body than most other vehicles
• An integrated cab with only one row of seats (even if more seating is available in the rear section)
• (Usually) Side doors designed to facilitate loading and unloading of bulky objects or larger numbers of people. Can be sliding doors or swing-out doors.
A minivan can fit seven people in the same space, length-wise, as a conventional car. This thing can’t because it actually has become a limo more than anything else. Sure, sliding doors aren’t common on a limo, but stretching a car inside of its wheelbase and not changing any other dimension is what a limo is, fundamentally. And that’s what this is: a stretched Cayenne Turbo GT Limo with sliding doors. But it can certainly work like a minivan, in the sense it’ll haul a lot of people!
There is some precedent here, too: back in 1967, a Porsche dealer named William Dick had a 911 stretched into a four-door for his wife, and that process was pretty much the same basic limoification process used on that Cayenne. Make it longer, add doors.
Second, This Is Way Better Than Him Buying Some Dumb Fancy Off-The-Rack SUV
This is the real meat of everything, right here: there’s no reason why the Zuck couldn’t have just bought some Lamborghini Urus or Bugatti Bentayaga or Rolls-Royce Cullinan or some other hyper-expensive big dumb SUV. That would have been the easy way, and it’s significant that that’s not the route taken. Instead, we get something genuinely bonkers, and that’s what we advocate!
If we’re going to have people on Earth with absurd amounts of money, why shouldn’t they spend that money with independent craftspeople and artisans to build one-of-a-kind bonkers cars? Maybe we should demand that this is what happens, legally, enforced with a crack team of commandos who will work over any billionaire who bores the public buying some expected bullshit luxury or supercar!
The more custom weird shit, the better. Besides, it’s not like a Cayenne is some precious thing; it’s fine to turn one of these into something ridiculous!
It’s Not His Fault He Can’t Get A Good Luxury Minivan
It’s also worth noting that there really aren’t any good premium-brand, luxury minivans you can just buy in America. The Kia Carnival, for example, is a great minivan with a striking design and well-equipped, but it’s still branded a Kia, and, even worse, named for an event best known for deep-fried stunt foods and creepy carnies, neither of which America’s upper classes go out of their way to be associated with.
Brand snobbery is absolutely idiotic, but it’s real, and it seems absurd that Toyota hasn’t re-badged one of their Japan-market luxury minivans like the Alphard or Vellfire as a Lexus yet. Why not? It makes no sense! There should be luxury minivan options for just normal-rich rich people, the same people who end up buying luxury SUVs like Lincoln Navigators or Cadillac Escalades or, yes, regular Cayennes, because a minivan is objectively better than an SUV at the job of moving six to nine people in comfort.
It’s only the idiotic minivan stigma that prevents this from happening, and I dearly hope that’s on its way out.
Remember, companies have toyed with this idea before! Even Porsche experimented with minivan ideas, on multiple occasions. They put 911 engines in Vanagons, and they also had their own unique designs, like the Varerra in the early ’90s:
If anything, the lesson from Zuckerberg’s Stretching of the Cayenne is that the Age of Premium Minivans is about to begin. We’ve been waiting far too long already.
This is the correct take. But, still, screw that guy.
Sorry, it looks dumb. There. I said it. That and if I had that much money I would surely find something more interesting.
No taste. And WCC. Enough said.
it’s what you do when you want a model x but for very specific reasons you will not buy a model x
This is an awfully long-winded defense of a fairly trivial issue. You folks angling for some Meta money?
Dick’s 911 is awesome, and doubly so that it’s brown.
Suicide doors are the sliding doors of the 60s.
I’ve been wanting a Panamera since day one.
Of all the colors in Porche’s extensive palette…
I still dig the finished product though.
I would’ve bought Clown Core’s Toyota Previa and gotten Xzibit to pimp it, but that’s just me.
I think the paramount feature of any custom-order car is to match owner’s persona.
Happy to report this Cayenne looks goofy enough to be Zuck’s
Everybody has to just calm down and remember than even billionaire’s kids feet stink too.
After those little rascals climb into this wagon’s juice-box soaked rear seats following a sweaty soccer practice then kick off those muddy soccer shoes…you want them as far away as possible from the front seats. Just like us normals.
Hehe
I agree with all the points BUT this thing will be catastrophically unsafe, which is the one thing I would consider to be top priority when shuttling my kids around. No doubt WCC screwed it together as best they could, and likely added some reinforcement, but crash safety is an incredibly involved and complex area of automotive design.
The Cayenne chassis was not designed to just add *L E N G T H* to it like this, those van doors appear to be custom, meaning you’d be lucky to even have a single side impact bar in them, much less curtain airbags, and I could go on an on. I’d argue the structural concerns are even greater given the amount of power this thing has. Many limo conversions are dubious at best when they struggle to maintain pace with modern traffic, but Cayenne Turbo GT power with that amount of stretch is just straight up sketch.
Yeah, safety was the first thing I thought of when I saw this. When you make modifications like that, you reduce the crash worthiness of the vehicle. All that extra weight is inertia that the factory crumple zones now have to soak up. What about safety from side impacts? Are there enough airbags where you want them? And if you’re adding airbags, are they in the right place? This also looks like it’ll beach itself on railroad crossings. No matter how well built this thing is, there’s no getting around the fact that you now have a vehicle that is untested in the event of an accident.
This is something meant to ferry kids around in on a regular basis. It doesn’t seem to be a very safe, or practical, way to go about that.
Well said. This is *fundamentally* a terrible idea for its stated purpose.
Unless it’s headed for the Hawaii estate where it will never go over 45mph which may be it’s purpose. It’s probably safe enough for that.
Fair, but good grief, why bother hacking up a Turbo GT for that? That’s the one that set the all-time SUV Nürburgring record, for Pete’s sake. You couldn’t get a further mismatch between the base vehicle and its intended use.
I agree but that’s a whole other conversation. Not anything I would ever do even if I could.
It will be more interesting to me and with the help of Stellantis to get a Pacifica Pinnacle AWD and put a hellcat on it, the whining from the supercharger will be louder than the people whining on Twitter.
what annoys me more is that he is sitting on the hood of the GT3
Considering the stretch limo market has been taken over by sprinters and transits, maybe they should bring regular stretch limos back with sliding doors.
Oh good god, tried a new airport limo company last time we did a long trip (because the previous ones had issues like drivers that spent too much time on their screens or had their livery car in the shop, etc.), the dispatcher said “is a van ok?” I said sure, assuming it was a standard executive limo van, but instead they sent a beat up bachelor party van, with barely upholstered benches along the sides of the van – and then the driver made a wrong turn on the way to the airport. Thank god I was actually a little awake at 5:00 am, and noticed he was driving away from the airport. The return trip in the Taurus was much better – the driver was just outside the airport door and got most of the way home on the info in his head.
He’s just trying to drive something as cool as this stretched Toyota Previa.
Second coolest Previa, right under the minigun-toting one from Last Action Hero.
We’ve been wanting to write about that one for a while, but the owner has never responded to our contacts. :/
Why am I not at all surprised that you’re already on the case? 🙂
I’m for it. These people have an inexhaustible amount of money, and this is great. Why not make the thing you want?
If it has all wheel steering, then it might even be easy to drive around town.
Zuckerberg sucks hugely and doesn’t deserve all the PR he’s been getting from car websites during his recent rebranding. He’s a boring loser with entirely too much money, and is just buying stuff in an attempt to look cool.
The Car also sucks, and so does the paint color.
I don’t have a problem with this, but a little surprised he’s willing to ferry his kids around in this thing. No way it’s going to be as safe as any off the rack car.
If your wife likes it and you have unlimited funds then why not. Happy wife, happy life. Sure it looks a little out of proportion but no more so than the long chevy trailblazer they used to make.
Well, it’s definitely a limo and not a van. And it’s, ok I guess? Sort of neat? Sliding door are always good. I’ll allow it, and as far as billionaires setting some cash on fire, this is easily the least offensive thing I can think of. Not sure why anyone would be angry about this, but again, internet.
I do wonder why Zuckerberg appears to be coating his face with some sort of, I don’t know, anti-graffiti coating?
*assumes Stef inbound*
*looks around nervously*
I already left my thoughts, but:
This is bad parsh.
No arguments here.
I thought you might give Jason a hard time for misspelling Cayenne 🙂
we have ways of dealing with that
(sending a polite note with the misspelling as a heads-up when I get a spare moment, but if you get to it before I do, that’s cool, too)
Anyone else see a bit of Lincoln MKT mixed with MKX in the general look?
The Varrera was just a Renault with a Caravan rear end, right? That rear-end is too similar to not be just from a Caravan.
Looks like a VW Sharan with the 996 fried egg lights on the front, giving it a weird fake Twingo look about it.
I’ll hate on the Chalk.
The Zuckerbergs probably had several discussions about how they had this transportation problem and decided to throw some money at it to make it go away. They decided stretching a Porsche SUV was the best compromise they could come up with. From what Ive read, many people hating on this is are hating on Zuckerbergs first and using his new “SUV” as a vehicle to do so. From an engineering and design point Im curious about safety, rigidity, and curb clearance etc. Design-wise stretching cars usually works better proportionally than shortening but still require design work elsewhere to balance the overall look of the vehicle, I dont think they did this, and it looks a bit odd overall, but they had a great starting point. Is this a money wasting compromise, absolutely, but the more money the more money these oligarchs spend on small independent shops, and vendors the better for us all.
But it’s ugly. Butt Ugly.
Well, it does look like a suppository.
I know where he can park it.