'A bulbous wart': why the 1.1-litre Porsche C88 was an Epic Fail

Porsche. For the past seven decades, the name has represented engineering excellence. Even Stuttgart’s most workaday offers have always been imbued with genuine dynamic depth, the sense they were created by folk with a pathological obsession for mechanical integrity and driving excitement.

Then again, the C88.

Yes, this bulbous wart you see before you is indeed a Porsche. Specifically it’s 1994’s C88, a prototype that mercifully never made it beyond that phase.

In Porsche’s defence, the C88 was fishing in unfamiliar waters. In the early ’90s, China’s ruling party decided it was about time their country had its own people’s car: a Chinese answer to the VW Beetle or Citroen 2CV. It invited Western carmakers to submit their proposals, the winning design to be built as a joint venture with a Chinese state-owned firm.

Porsche – perhaps briefly forgetting it was, y’know, Porsche – was one of the manufacturers to answer the call. Sometimes it’s OK to leave those calls unanswered, lads.

Don’t get Epic Fail wrong. Epic Fail loves a cheap and cheerful car. An econobox shot through with Porsche’s legendary attention to detail could have been a great thing. The C88 was not a great thing. It was a budget three-box that rode on 15in steel wheels, eschewing any Porsche styling cues in favour of a bold new ‘suppressing trapped wind’ aesthetic.

The jacked ride height was aimed at taming China’s potholed roads, while the 48bhp, 1.1-litre 4cyl engine was aimed at taming any driver excitement. Porsche boasted the design was done in four months. Quite what took it so long is unclear.

China abruptly cancelled the people’s car project in 1995. Some suggested it had been a devious scheme to extract ideas from Europe’s finest auto designers and engineers for free. If so, China apparently looked at the C88 and decided even ‘free’ wasn’t cheap enough.