I'm not too worried. VW owns Lamborghini, Bugatti and Bentley. FIAT owns 90% or so of Ferrari, plus all of Maserati and Alfa Romeo. Ford owned Jaguar... now it's owned by Tata Motors. As long as they let Porsche continue to be Porsche, I doubt the average buyer will even notice.
the average buyer hasn't noticed that a "bentley" continental is just a VW phaeton with uglier body panels (and it's heavy not because it has more stuff in it, but merely because they place two lead weights in the trunk to balance the weight of the engine, which hangs out ahead of the front axle, undoubtedly the most retarded engine configuration in the history of the automobile).
the "lamborghini" gallardo shares its basic engine architecture with that of the 5-cylinder golf engine, and just like that golf engine, it's slapped together in some hungarian plant. some italian exotic this is...
bugatti... what is that? just a badge. they could have placed any badge on that VW-developed car. my guess is the next "bugatti" will be a variation of the "bentley" continental/VW phaeton.
fiat has owned ferrari since the 70s 9or even earlier?), and thankfully have kept their hands off it... with the exception of the new california, which is built on the same platform as the vastly cheaper and staggeringly more beautiful maserati gran turismo.
ford's ownership of jaguar was a fucking disaster, producing one turd after another, and never making a profit. the indians can only go up from here, i wish them luck.
to get back to the subject of porsche: the german press is already talking about a shared car (a 4-cylinder) as a VW sportscar/entry level porsche, and there will be a new porsche SUV based on the audi Q5. porsche already sells VW's 6 cylinder engine in the cayenne, and VW diesel engines are available in european cayennes as well. a porsche GTI is not as much of a stretch as you might think.
they call this platform engineered crap 'progress', but it's really just cost-cutting. one must bow down to economic realities to survive, perhaps; but i think it's sad. how long before only paint and a badge differentiate all cars from one another?