German car manufacturer Porsche has been heavily criticized after the company appeared to airbrush out a statue of Jesus Christ overlooking the city of Lisbon in the first version of a commercial celebrating the 60th anniversary of the 911.
As several social media users highlighted, the company’s marketers decided to cut the Cristo Rei from the video, leaving an empty plinth situated in the Portuguese capital.
The German company, a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group famous for its luxury sports cars, launched a campaign last week celebrating six decades of Porsche 911’s “very fast years” and promoting the vehicle’s special edition model, the 2024 Porsche 911 S/T. As part of the campaign, a roughly two-and-a-half-minute promotional film was released showing the evolution of the Porsche 911.
At about 44 seconds into the version of the video posted on the company’s website, a Porsche 911 drives across the screen against the backdrop of the 25 de Abril Bridge and the river overlooked by the Cristo Rei, but the 92-meter-tall statue of Jesus was missing from the top of the 269-meter-tall concrete pedestal visible on the other side of the river.
The “mistake” was first noticed by a user on X, whose post went viral.
Porsche said in a statement to Fox that “an early version of the film, made in Europe, does not feature the statue of Cristo Rei.
“We sincerely regret and fully understand the pain this has caused. This film has been removed,” it added.
Shortly afterward, a new version of the video was uploaded to their YouTube channel, in which the statue of Jesus Christ already appeared on the pedestal.
