Here’s Why Porsche Uses Large Headlight Camouflage on Its Prototypes

      Porsche

      Get The Drive’s daily newsletter

      The latest car news, reviews, and features.

      If you follow spy shots of future cars, you might have noticed a pattern with Porsche’s vehicles. While many manufacturers cover their cars in swirls and complex designs to confuse onlookers, Porsche employs a different method: they cover their prototypes in flat black and place stickers resembling headlights and taillights over the actual lighting. These fake designs serve to obscure the car’s true features from afar, to the extent that you might think the vehicles belong to an entirely different brand. This is exactly why the Cayenne EV prototypes sport pixel-light decals reminiscent of Hyundai on their rear ends, as mentioned by Porsche itself.

      Recently, while in Spain testing Porsche’s upcoming EV, we spoke with Sascha Niesen, the manager of verification and validation for Cayenne prototypes. He essentially oversees the fleet. Sascha addressed all our pressing questions, starting with: Why the oversized fake headlights? Why not adopt the “Magic Eye” illusion prints that other brands often use?

      “Well, there are two choices,” Niesen explained. “You can either make it resemble a previous model you want it to imitate, or you could make it look entirely different.”

      Niesen pointed out the front of the Cayenne prototype. “This one—clearly shaped like an actual headlight, right? That’s based on an existing design, and the goal is to divert attention from the fact that there's a new one. When you spot the car from a distance, its odd shape presents a sense of familiarity.”

      Then, Niesen shifted our focus to the rear. “The light bar at the back doesn’t belong to any Porsche model. It resembles the Ioniq 5. This is intended to mislead people from recognizing that there’s a genuine Porsche light bar underneath.”

      If you observe Porsche’s design evolution over the past decade, you'll see a trend towards flatter headlights. The traditional oval shapes have transitioned into triangle forms reminiscent of fried eggs on the Macan and 718, which have subsequently evolved into squircle shapes for models like the present Cayenne and Taycan. The headlights on Porsche’s latest models, including the Macan EV, are even slimmer, and the electric Cayenne adheres to this design trend. “You want to divert attention from the fact that it’s actually a very narrow light,” Niesen explained. “So, we amplify the size by applying large camouflage to it.”

      In the case of this Cayenne, Porsche literally scaled up an image of a prior model’s headlight to overshadow the smaller, authentic unit. “You can tell it’s a Porsche, so using someone else's headlight wouldn’t make sense,” Niesen said. “But you do need something that looks like a headlight. Just attach an existing one, enlarge it, and stretch it out.”

      Niesen mentioned that Porsche’s prototypes attract a lot of attention in public, but often for the wrong reasons.

      “I have all sorts of amusing experiences,” he said. “People approach me and ask, ‘Oh, were you in an accident?’ because of all the tape on the car. I assure them, ‘No, there hasn’t been an accident.’ Especially in the U.S., where people tend to tape everything. Their mirror is just hanging off, and they think, ‘Oh, just put some tape on it. That’s fine.’”

      Naturally, given Porsche’s standards, even a straightforward decision like placing fake headlights on a test vehicle isn't rushed—it goes through an approval process.

      “Typically, when there’s a draft for a camouflage design, it gets approved by Michael Steiner, the member of the Porsche Executive Board for Research and Development,” Niesen explained. “He receives various drafts, approves one, then it gets put on a car to review, and eventually it appears on the actual car. The same goes for new camouflage stages—the final version is always cleared by him, who will say, ‘Yes, that’s acceptable. We’ll use it this way,’ or, ‘No, we need to alter something. We don’t want to reveal this part of the car.’”

      At the end of the day, Porsche’s approach of keeping these wraps uncomplicated appears effective, and it’s challenging to dispute Niesen’s reasoning. “All black serves as the best camouflage. Honestly, we can’t understand why other companies use that peculiar zebra pattern on their prototypes because it practically shouts, ‘Look at me, I’m a prototype.’ It draws everyone's attention.”

      “For us, it’s always simply black. There are different stages of this. Before this, we had hard covers on the doors. We drove to Sweden during a joint test trip with a Cariad test vehicle that was running an Audi Q6 covered in zebra camouflage. At a charging stop waiting for the ferry to Sweden, we had three Porsches charging alongside one Audi vehicle, and people would stroll past the Porsches