This Porsche Taycan Is a Vivid Color Fantasy Come to Life

When Sean Wotherspoon comes up with a collab, one can be sure it’s going to be something very colorful. The designer and influencer likes to use fashionable streetwear with a vivid color palette and likes to use unusual and unique materials. This time, the 32-year-old designer teamed up with Porsche to create his own car: a highly customized Taycan 4 Cross Turismo. 

Photo by Porsche.

Wotherspoon filled the interior of the art car in colors of Nash Blue, Sean Peach, Loretta Purple and Ashley Green. He also used cork material on the dashboard, steering wheel, and center console and added corduroy as another distinctive texture inside the cabin. Wotherspoon loves to use corduroy in his sneaker designs and as a staunch vegan advocate, the car’s roof lining, seat centers and sun visors are also upholstered with this material in Atacama Beige. The seat’s backrest inserts are ribbed to create that corduroy effect. Taycan customers can also choose to get this leather-free option.

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The color blocking concept on the car’s exterior was replicated for the interior. Wotherspoon’s use of corduroy and cork, which are materials that he uses for his streetwear. Corduroy also happens to be a traditional material used in classic Porsches, particularly to clad the seat centers of the Porsche 356.

“Working with cork, however, presented a number of challenges to our trimmers,” says Müller. Ultimately, the laminated material, which comes on rolls, had to be fitted to complex shapes such as the dashboard.

Photo by Porsche.

Wotherspoon himself presented the art car through Porsche’s Instagram channel, which also included a live question and answer session with viewers. 

“From Janis Joplin’s psychedelic 356 in the 1960s to the 911 RSR from 2019 designed by Richard Philips—the list of iconic art cars from Porsche is already long,” says Robert Ader, chief marketing officer at Porsche. “Art cars suit Porsche very well. Creative design work with artists inspires us and motivates us to keep developing the brand without changing it fundamentally.”

Photo by Porsche.

“Creativity thrives on interaction,” adds Michael Mauer, Porsche’s head of style. “As a designer, it’s important to question everything and always aspire to consider ideas in a new light. Working with young designers like Sean helps us to gain new impulses from very different product areas.”

“When I look at something, I examine how I can change it and elevate it to a new level,” Wotherspoon says. “These questions are my personal challenge. It doesn’t matter whether I’m working on a sneaker or car design, a workflow, sustainability topics or a new material. Striving for innovation drives me and I was fascinated from the start by the unusual materials that the Porsche designers in Weissach work with. We inspired each other again and again throughout the project and ultimately created a completely new type of vehicle design.” 

In creating his car, Wotherspoon visited the Porsche Design Studio in Weissach several times and also oversaw the physical creation of his art car onsite, spending time being hands on in the workshop and the trim shop as well. At first, the project used virtual reality technology to try out and present ways to customize the car including the selection of exterior color options.

Photo by Porsche.

“Inspired by a visit to the Porsche Museum, Sean got the idea for circular elements on the doors,” recalls Volker Müller, head of color and trim at Style Porsche. “His idea echoes the starting-number roundels on historic racing cars. At the same time, this inverted color breaks up the large area.”

Wotherspoon used the color references created by color language solutions company Pantone to make sure that the colors he wanted are accurate. He says he used unusual names of the paint colors to have a personal background.

“After we explained the importance of having unique names, Sean named the paints after members of his family,” says Volker Müller. This is how Nash Blue, Sean Peach, Loretta Purple, and Ashley Green came about.

Photo by Porsche.

The Taycan 4 Cross Turismo designed by Wotherspoon uses elements from the Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur. This option includes its 21-inch Cross Turismo Design wheels and the rear wiper cover to be painted in as well as the light strip with Porsche lettering in high-gloss black. The Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur’s Sonderwunsch program is a revival of Porsche’s bespoke service of the same name from the late 1970s, which launched in 2021.