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 thing cosplaying as human has enough money to commission a full production run of the Varrera, and instead did this?
I don’t hate the car, but it is a missed opportunity.
No, we’re right. This thing sucks. It’s just like everything Zuck touches in tech, too: they added a bunch of garbage that ultimately makes the original thing worse for its intended purpose. It’s giving “Enshittification: The Vehicle.”
I’m all for wacky stuff, but don’t call a limo a “minivan,” and if you’re going to Cayenne limo it up, at least pick a better color and have a visually coherent roofline. This poor parsh is an eyesore now, and goshdarnit, a ‘Ring-beating Turbo GT deserved better. Level of surprise that Zuckerberg is a Slate Gray dork: zero. The man has all the personality of used chewing gum and buying a GT3 Touring to match (in the same boring grey!) can’t fix that.
The most egregious sin here isn’t “U RUNE PARSH!!2” or whatever. It’s that the structural integrity of a cut-and-stretched vehicle is always going to be worse. That’s why limo crashes get hella gnarly: they’re structurally compromised in the middle. So, when it comes to this thing’s stated purpose — hauling kids — it’s far worse than just buying a purpose-built three-row minivan or SUV.
Third-row safety admittedly isn’t great in any vehicle sold today and you’d lose some leg room by just buying a Sienna or whatever, but it would be far safer than a vehicle that’s been chopped in half and lengthened. You can build a bitchin’ minivan, too! Bisimoto’s absolute burnout machine comes to mind here.
(Side rant about other coverage I’ve read today: It’s disappointing to see other car pubs suddenly go to bat for this dweeb after he bought a couple of Porsches. Zuck’s trash website is why your elderly relatives seem to live in a different reality full of seven-fingered misinformation, not to mention why a bunch of our colleagues in media lost their jobs after Facebook lied about its video numbers and convinced a bunch of outlets to pivot to video. Zuck can’t just parsh his way out of that. He’s deeply negligent at best if not actively evil, and everything he touches deserves to be approached with scrutiny and skepticism. In other words, I will not be participating in the Zuckerberg Image Rehab Tour, and may God have mercy on your gullible soul if you fell for it.)
This guy is a merchant of hate in the most literal way possible.
“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”
Other than the two generations of Lexus LM?
https://www.lexus.com.au/models/lm/overview
I was going to say, I’m pretty sure they’ve done exactly the badge engineering and predator maw-ing required.
Two notes:
1. Agree. We’re car-positive here, and Zuck turning a Cayenne into a minivan is objectively rad. More rich people need to do interesting shit with their money.
2. We should be far, far more concerned that one of the richest men on earth keeps naming his kids after Roman emperors. The MMA thing is weird, but whatever. The Hawaiian bunker is tacky and stupid, but whatever. The car thing, reasonable people can differ. But one of the most powerful people on the planet having a Roman emperor fetish? Not great!
I think we’re missing the real meat of his post.
Manual GT3.
I did not know creepy lizard people knew how to drive God’s Transmission.
Makes me actually think he is slightly relatable.
I don’t care what a Silicon Valley tech bro does to a car I don’t care about. Now Mercedes Streeter or David Tracy messing with a Cayenne sounds interesting.
More on topic I think the Toyota Alphard needs to be available in the US
I think you’re mixing up the issues here a focusing a bit much on details which the internet has no patience for. People don’t dump on him for car reasons- they do because he’s a billionaire bragging about *his build. See, the issue here is in the title: “bragging billionaire”. You can be either but not both.
Not my taste in any way (I’d rather have an old hearse if I needed the space), but more interesting than a stock Porsche or something off the shelf.
Hilarious and excellent, but should have used the normal backed Cayenne, not the silly “coupe”, that’s my only note. We need more family cars with sliding doors, they rock!
The good news is that this project kept many artisans employed for a while, and they likely learned a few new skills that they can apply to future projects – this benefits us all. In general I like the idea of a stretched Cayenne, but to my eye this may have stretched too much and it looks too out of proportion.
There is not a lot available that has easy-to-use high-performance for 6 or 7 humans. My neighbor has a model X that he got for his big family, but usually I see them driving their X7. Going domestic you can get the big Escalade, (I do not think the Navigator or Wagoneer is really in the same performance/comfort league for a daily for this number of people) but my guess is this custom car has better, more comfortable seating arrangements. From Japanese OEMs you have the big Lexi or the Infiniti QX80 or whatever their monster SUV is – although my neighbor traded his in for an Escalade and he seems to much, much prefer the Escalade. They frequently have six people in the car – mom, dad, grampa, grandma, and two kids – sometimes more with kids’ friends. This is not something I need, so I do not spend much attention and therefore I have likely missed a couple of good contenders – there are only two of us with occasionally another couple.
Rivian R1S is probably the closest today. Seats 7 and currently available with up to 850hp.
I love the proportions of the R1T, and if I was going to go EV that is what I would buy today – but damn is that thing big – I don’t think it will fit in my garage – which probably means the R1S can readily seat 7. Good call.
I’m all for this, more people should commission cars. But why coupe? And why chalk?
Please for the love of everything, Porsche has a million colors to choose from and you basically chose milk.
I feel insulted on behalf of milk, good sir. Milk has more character than this grey.
I’m sticking with my original statement stef.
So why the hell did they use the “coupe” one for a GD minivan? This looks really bad anyway but the decision to use a coupe for the minivan just adds to the stupidity. Coupe SUVs are terrible designs. All of them, including Porsche’s options.
That’s a pretty cool car, love to see more about the build. West Coast Customs does a damn good job usually. I’m hoping they filmed the whole job. It’s OK to hate on Zuk, but remember this is a car site…although…it would be weird to say “Look at this amazing VW Bug that Hitler designed for the latest Nazi Rally”. It’s a tough one, for sure.
What’s really weird is that when you look down, there aren’t any pedals. Then again, what would you do with them with no legs, anyway?
The Zuk was quoted as saying “This is my human car. It fits numerous humans. For which, I have a need. Because, I’m certainly human. Often having human experiences with other confirmed persons. And any speculation to me being inorganic are not correct.”
Toyota Vellfire is the right solution, this is not. Zuck can do what he wants, and this is definitely a limo. But the Vellfires are amazing.
Sorry, the Alphard. Either are better.
I don’t hate him for commissioning a custom Cayenne.
But that doesn’t mean I have to like the design.
This is the correct take. But, still, screw that guy.