When a Badge Stops Asking for You

Brand erosion doesn’t start with a bad product. It starts when a product stops asking anything of you. The shift from analog, participatory machines to soft, tech-forward appliances is subtle—and seductive. It promises ease, it delivers speed. But for many customers, it drains the very fuel luxury was supposed to provide: meaning.

Consider Porsche’s move toward Macan and Cayenne dominance. Both are brilliantly executed. They’re quiet, quick, and relentlessly competent. They make life simpler on a Tuesday. Yet that very competence can rearrange a customer’s psyche. The car goes from “I drive it” to “it drives me.” The first is agency, the second is service. Agency builds identity; service reduces friction. After the first hit of convenience, frictionlessness fades fast.

This is symbolic self-mastery. We buy a luxury object to close the gap between who we are and who we want to be. If the daily feel of that object doesn’t match the inner picture—if a badge famed for tactile, high-signal feedback now gives you sanitized speed instead—you get self-discrepancy. Pride at purchase, but nagging mini-regrets in use, justifications, unprompted explanations. That dissonance fuels option-chasing and spec gymnastics (“maybe with the sport exhaust and the big brakes it’ll feel special”). Sometimes it works. Often it doesn’t. You can’t bolt on meaning.

There’s also a competence tax hidden in the mainstreaming of luxury. As the portfolio standard shifts toward seamlessness, manual gearboxes become boutique, not baseline; steering feel becomes a setting, not a promise. Skill is reframed as an optional upgrade. For the enthusiast, this registers as a small humiliation: an implicit message that your attention is inefficient, your effort unnecessary. You didn’t ask for a chauffeured life; you asked for a conversation with the machine. When that dialogue is compressed by software, the ego loses a playground.

Status, meanwhile, becomes fragile. A Macan signals “tasteful success” at the school pickup. Park it next to a manual 997 at a sunrise drive and the status script changes. Fragile status seeks reinforcement through peacocking—wheels, stripes, stitched leathers—because the deeper source of pride (e.g. mastery) has been swapped for comfort. This is how we end up with luxury as look, not lore.

Why does this resonate beyond gearheads? Because the SUV-ization of luxury mirrors the culture at large. We live in a world where comfort has become a moral good. We’ve optimized inconvenience out of daily life. Groceries are delivered. Playlists curate themselves. Notifications anticipate needs you didn’t have yet. We’ve come to believe that the absence of friction is progress. The trouble is that identity is often forged in friction, by learning, by failing, by trying again. A machine that removes all edges also removes the rituals that anchor self-respect.

Layer in safetyism and risk aversion. Regulations, litigation, and consumer preference converge, surprise is seen as a threat. Cars oblige: more insulation, more intervention, more layers between you and the world. This can have real benefits (e.g. fewer accidents, more practicality). But culture pays a toll in sameness. If everything feels equally smooth, why this brand, why this model, why this money?

Then comes achievement outsourcing. We rent our identities now: through subscriptions, concierge services, and algorithms that pre-chew our experience. Luxury shifts from craft engagement to comfort consumption. The move toward Macan/Cayenne is rational in this frame: speed without stress, prestige without practice, but the psyche keeps score. Without participation, pride thins. We replace the ritual of driving with the ritual of content about driving.

None of this means the SUV is a villain or that comfort is a vice. It means brands, and owners, have to choose with intention. For a brand, the antidote to erosion is a participatory spine: visible, not buried. Offer the comfort spec and the craft spec in every line. Be honest about which cars can feature a manual transmission rather than offering excuses and premium package gatekeeping. Cap weight where feasible. Tune steering for texture first, metrics second. Make feel the default promise, not a scavenger hunt through option bundles. Tie ownership to rituals—curated drives, factory tours, track clinics—so the product becomes a skill, not just a payment.

For owners, the fix is similarly human-scale. Choose involvement on purpose. If the soul you’re seeking is conversation, buy the trim that asks you questions, that challenges your beliefs, that speaks to you, not at you (even if it’s slower on a spreadsheet). Build rituals: the Sunday loop before the world wakes up; a heel-toe lesson; one track day per year; your phone in the glovebox. Measure the right thing: not 0–60 times, but how many times you lost yourself in the moment. You’ll keep the car longer, and you’ll like yourself more in it.

The big cultural point is this: opting for luxury without intention can make us comfortable strangers to ourselves. But luxury that asks for our skill, our attention, our courage; that luxury makes us better. The Macan and Cayenne can absolutely live inside that second story, but only if the brand refuses to let convenience be the lone author of taste. The badge shouldn’t just confer status; it should confer standards. Standards for feel, for focus, for the small, stubborn joys that can’t be automated.

Brand erosion is not a scandal, but it is dishonest. It’s a slow forgetting of the foundation that the house was built on. The way back isn’t nostalgia. It’s design that restores agency. Machines that ask something of us tend to give us something back. You might call it dignity, you might call it mastery. In an age obsessed with making things easier, that might be the rarest luxury of all.