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Developing a new car means that at some point, automakers have to put working prototypes on public roads in varying stages of completeness without spoiling the surprise. So they come up with all kinds of ways to hide the final design, like mule cars with different bodies, fake panels to cover the real form, and most often the WWI-inspired dazzle camouflage wraps to confuse the eye. That’s what makes the trick Porsche used on a Cayman EV prototype spotted in Germany this week so inspired, and pretty funny: it’s just a piece of tape.
It’s surprisingly effective. The car’s side windows are outlined with chrome tape, but instead of following the real window trim in the back, it extends onto the body to change the shape of the greenhouse. At a glance, it looks like the rear window goes a lot further back and ends in a downswept taper like the 911. In reality, it’s shorter and upswept, like the current Cayman. It doesn’t work from every angle depending on the lighting, but when it does, it does.
That might seem like a small detail, but in our opinion it really does change how the Cayman EV looks. For the better? That’s for you to decide. We made a GIF with a photoshopped version to highlight the real shape versus the taped one so you can compare.
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Porsche is able to get away with this one weird trick because it doesn’t use traditional prototype camo, instead opting to run completely blacked-out models to fly under the radar, as one of its prototype fleet managers explained to The Drive this summer. “To be honest, we don’t really know why other companies are doing that weird zebra thing on their prototypes because it just screams, ‘Hello, I’m a prototype.’ It makes everyone stare,” Sascha Niesen explained.
Niesen also shared that all prototype camouflage setups are run through a rigorous approval process, and you have to laugh at the image of a room full of German engineers and executives methodically brainstorming ideas to disguise the Cayman EV’s window shape until one of the speaks up and says “What if we just used zee tape?”
Below you can see a video taken earlier this year when the car still had the whole back half of the side glass covered with a fake panel that hid the shape. Apparently the time has come to take that off, but a tip of the cap to Porsche for nearly fooling everyone.
Got a tip? Let us know at tips@thedrive.com.
Byron is an editor at The Drive with a keen eye for infrastructure, sales and regulatory stories.
