Porsche and Lucasfilm tie up on a Taycan-inspired starship

When digesting this news it will help a skosh to remember that Porsche's new Taycan battery-electric sedan is properly pronounced TIE-can, and that Porsche released a commercial earlier this month called "Kick Up Dust" featuring the selfsame Taycan and a dastardly looking TIE fighter. A week after the 18-second spot debuted, Porsche announced a collaboration with TIE fighter maker Lucasfilm to create a "fantasy starship design." The final product will be shown at the world premiere of "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker," which is Episode IX in the 42-year-old franchise and the final installment in the Skywalker storyline. The timing's propitious, coming as Taycan deliveries ought to begin for U.S. customers.

Despite numerous references to the Empire, it seems Porsche's working on a Rebel Alliance craft; the joint design project is called the Designer Alliance, and the starship will be a combination of the Rebel X-Wing, Y-Wing, and U-Wing fighters. Lucasfilm executive creative director Doug Chiang listed the ship's required specs as a minimum of two engines and a maximum of four, two pilots and up to three additional crew, two front entrances, and a large rear cargo door. After that, the cosmos is the limit. Two design teams have meetings planned in Stuttgart and San Francisco throughout the process.

Future starship designers can check in at the Design Alliance site for videos, sketches, and updates. We wouldn't mind if the Porsche team managed to sneak in a reference to the 935 "Baby" that debuted in 1977, the same year as "Star Wars." The racer with the 1.4-liter, 370-hp flat-six is as contrary to the Taycan as the Empire is to the Alliance, however, the Baby was the product of rebellious ingenuity that performed a couple of Skywalker-like hit-and-runs in its day.