Porsche says all of its cars use styling cues taken from the 911 as their basis. The shutline of the Panamera’s bonnet, for example, and the high-set front wings, are obvious 911 traits, as is the falling side window line.
Matching these to a car other than a rear-engined two-door coupé is not the challenging part of the design. The difficult part is making the traditional 911-style sloping roofline work with this luxury hatchback’s proportions.
On almost all hatchbacks the downward curve is reversed at some point by a boot lip or spoiler, but not on the Panamera. And it’s the way the roofline curves that’s the most controversial – and to our eyes, least successful – element of the design.
Porsches rarely sit directly alongside their rivals, but the Panamera is marked out further by having four seats to the more conventional five, and by the fact that convention dictates a big luxury car should have a saloon boot, rather than a hatchback.
Most luxury saloons are also more than five metres long, a mark that the Panamera misses by three centimetres.
Few luxury saloons get a manual gearbox option either, but in naturally aspirated form that’s what the 4.8 V8-powered car gets as standard. However, the 493bhp Turbo you see here has Porsche’s seven-speed PDK twin-clutch gearbox as standard. With PDK (optional on the S) comes Porsche’s first application of stop-start technology.
The Turbo also gets the air-sprung suspension that’s only optional on other Panameras, and four-wheel drive.
The drivetrain itself is not dissimilar to that of the Cayenne SUV, although the platform is different. Do not be surprised, however, if the Panamera platform later spawns other cars within the Volkswagen group.
