Panamera = Fugly

[steuspeed]

I'm looking at the new Panamera in this weeks Autoweek. I almost barfed on the page with the metallic tan 4,344lb turd. The article sites 132 buttons in the cabin. For $132,600 I guess that is what you get. $1000 a button plus one ugly ride that goes fast down the autobahn. Good thing it's fast, so no one will see the fool that bought this tank of grossness. Porsche plans to sell 20,000 units per year. Good luck with that. I'll say it again.

Panamera = FAIL

[milehitom]

Think how many Cayennes Porsche has sold. A lot...their marketing guys probably said, "Y'know, if we make something even uglier, we'll sell more!

Tom

[...m...]

...i'm reserving judgement until i see it in person, but i'm optimistic that the panamera might share some of the quirky charm which made old five-door saabs such endearing touring cars...now when's lotus going to produce an evora wagon?..

[texige]

Not a fan but I think I would rather have it then a S or 7. I like the 4 place seating and sport exhaust option. It may look better in person.

[AnsisK]

Originally Posted by steuspeed

I'm looking at the new Panamera in this weeks Autoweek. I almost barfed on the page with the metallic tan 4,344lb turd. The article sites 132 buttons in the cabin. For $132,600 I guess that is what you get. $1000 a button plus one ugly ride that goes fast down the autobahn. Good thing it's fast, so no one will see the fool that bought this tank of grossness. Porsche plans to sell 20,000 units per year. Good luck with that. I'll say it again.

Panamera = FAIL

Add a zero to pretty much every figure on the Panamera spec sheet and you'll have what everyone else was whining about with the Veyron, and that hasn't stopped anyone. Not only that, but it also performs unexpectedly well for those who get to drive one.

Panamera # FAIL. They will sell every single one without a problem.

[shokwaves]

It's going to be very impressive in real life. It will sell like hot cakes. Those people with $$$ got Cayenne's because there was no other P to haul the family, but now they have an option.

[Chris D.]

I never judge a car by a photo; I will have to see it in person. Having said that, I find all Porsches only slightly better than average in appearance so it's not likely that I will be a huge fan.

[SweetDaddyD]

My partner just did a clear bra over the full front of one. It's an ugly car.

[fitfan]

its too gangly... too long, and the roof is too square/flat - they went for function over form - its a no excuses full 4 seater wagon, non suv... thats what you end up with a turd blob. - they should have skipped over the 911 family styling cue's, and gone edgy given the hard points and porportions...

however 90% of the buying public hasn't a clue about styling and form... so i think porsche will be fine.

i think they should have backed down alittle on the over sized rear seats and gone with something appealing if they insited on the blob styling cues... but whatever, ...i am not a product manager of one of the most savy product pushers in that market!

[Noisycow]

Porsche will sell a gazillion of those ugly suckers.

[mopho]

My friend was on the press trip and he said it does have a couple of nice angles..... if you squint

He did say it was a fantastic drive though

Here is Dan Neil of the LA Times review

From Dan Neil, LA Times auto critic:
The new Porsche Panamera is the best-handling big sedan in the world, which I grant is a little like being the smartest kid on the Arizona State football team or the most chaste governor of South Carolina. No matter how hard you try -- and Porsche's engineers have busted their adorable lederhosen here -- a 4,344-pound, 16.3-foot four-door cannot beguile physics like a sports car, and it certainly cannot be made to handle anything like a 911.

The Panamera thus presents Porsche with a problem of brand ontology: What is a Porsche? If you've spent much time in a Boxster, Cayman or 911 Carrera, new or old, you know the feeling of these cars: cold-rolled and heat-tempered, hard and light, nap of the Earth, edgy and reactive, ineffably masculine, a disposition that is to other sports cars what Dexedrine is to Geritol.

The Panamera is none of that. Compared with a 911, this thing handles like well-upholstered field artillery.

There's nothing flickable or silver-heeled about the Panamera, and although its limits are truly spectacular -- the Turbo model with the Sport Chrono package can carrier-launch from zero to 60 mph in 4 seconds, generate 1 g of cornering force and brake to a stop from 188 mph in a tongue-unraveling 7 seconds -- the Panamera requires nothing so much as deliberation at the wheel. This is a big car (76 inches wide on a 115-inch wheelbase) with a mighty 4.8-liter V8 up front (400 horsepower, or 500 hp in turbo trim). There's no trailing-throttle oversteer bringing the tail around as there is in a rear-engine 911. No capering through the esses. Yes, you can make the Panamera do amazing things. Bring a whip and a chair.

Porsche's chieftains know they are trying to bridge a conceptual gulf here, so you'll notice the advertising harping on this notion of this gran turismo being a "true" Porsche, to the point of protesting too much. I take a different view. It's a car made by Porsche, with breathtaking engineering that is routine for Weissach. The materials are exquisite, the seats are fantastic, the four-seat interior design is the best on the market and the whole thing is so summarily pleasurable it makes me want to empty out the nearest FDIC-insured facility with a tommy gun, a la John Dillinger.

To nail the throttle, and bring all 567 pound-feet of torque online (in Sport Plus mode), is to know the giddy excitement of falling into a black hole. That 1,000-piece horn section that must have played unceasingly in Richard Wagner's balmy head? It's in the exhaust.

I love the big, through-cabin console with its switches arrayed like the stripes on a sergeant's sleeve. Among the hundredweight of amenities are things such as a second navigation display embedded in the instrument panel and an optional Burmester audiophile sound system, a 1,000-watt, 16-channel/speaker unit that is the best road-going audio I've ever heard.

The damned car is magnificent. But it is not made of the same charmed isotopes as the 911, and therefore not a Porsche. Sorry.

Ironically, the company's determination to have the Panamera received as true Porsche has led to the car's greatest downfall: its exterior styling. Or is that a pratfall? If you look closely, you'll see that styling chief Michael Mauer has essentially taken the front and rear of a 911 and rudely grafted in between two sets of sedan doors. I understand this was done in the name of brand continuity, to retain the styling vocabulary of Porsche, in which there is real equity. But, jeez, this isn't styling -- this is some kind of weird enlargement surgery you go to South America for.

We've been here before. When Porsche introduced the Cayenne sport utility vehicle seven years ago, the company turned itself inside out explaining how a 5,600-pound SUV with a two-speed transfer case was spiritual heir to a 917 Long Tail. But it turned out it really didn't matter. The Porsche SUV turned out to be the heresy that everyone was looking for, and the Cayenne became Porsche's bestselling model. Like the Cayenne, the Panamera is vital to Porsche's long-term profitability and plans for expansion -- and, one assumes, the ultimate goal of taking over VW, the minnow swallowing the whale.

The company expects to build 20,000 Panameras a year at its Leipzig, Germany, assembly hall. The base model is the rear-drive Panamera S ($89,900); then there's the all-wheel-drive 4S ($93,000) and the Turbo ($132,600). All U.S.-spec cars will be equipped with the exquisite seven-speed, double-clutch PDK gearbox. Within a year Porsche will offer a V6 base model and -- brace yourself, Sunshine -- a hybrid version.

Also like the Cayenne, the Panamera is laced into a sports car corset with an astonishing ligature of adaptive damping, optional air suspension, active aerodynamics, active anti-roll bars and all manner of traction and stability assists, as well as anti-lock and anti-fade braking technologies. This thing runs on silicon as much as petroleum. The adaptive air suspension, for instance, enables drivers to raise the car an inch to get in and out of driveways; it also enables the car to squat down an inch in Sport Plus mode, for better cornering stability and lower aero-drag.

On the Turbo, the four-piece rear wing deploys in stages until, at 127 mph, it attains a 10-degree attack angle for max down force until the car reaches its top speed of 188 mph. I hit 180 mph, and the car couldn't have been more civilized and nailed down. What kind of sick mind makes a car cabin quiet at those speeds?

Yes, the Bentley Flying Spur is faster, with a 202-mph top speed, but the Panamera Turbo would obliterate the Bentley on a road course.

Obviously, there's a lot of technology on this car, and one enormous fig leaf of environmental respectability. The Panamera comes with a stop-start feature that will, under the right circumstances, kill the engine at a stoplight to improve fuel economy.

Yes, but for the lake of fire under the hood, that's very efficient.

Porsche wraps a 4-door hulk in racy corset - Los Angeles Times

[Gizmo3000]

Originally Posted by shokwaves

It's going to be very impressive in real life. It will sell like hot cakes. Those people with $$$ got Cayenne's because there was no other P to haul the family, but now they have an option.

you nailed it pretty well there.

I'd say the stereotypical Porsche buyer is more concerned with brand than performance and looks. - and this thing more like a Porsche than the Cayenne anyhow.

I'm sure It'll sell very, very well, and probably take a sizable chunk of BMW sales in particular. Perhaps a bit of Mercedes, but those are mostly for wives (who the Cayenne is more marketed toward!?)

it'll be very interesting and VERY revealing to see how this will cannibalize Cayenne sales! I bet there'll be a rather noticeable drop now that the badge snobs have two choices for a 4-door Porsche.

[fitfan]

there is no such thing as canablizing sales... only market share and volumes

thats why i think VW is silly for not bringing over scirocco, and 1/2 of A3 buyers would be in 1 series if BMW would bring over the 1 wagon. but i suppose the run the payback vs investment in retailing a new product? who knows... if your BMW why would you let audi take the A3 market right from under your nose?

anyways - porsche will increase their volumes for the next few years - and there are a lot of markets other than the US and it the 4-door p-cars/suv will sell crazy in the mid / east. i don't think porsche cares 'which' anyone buys...

[RoadDad]

At first glance I thought it was a Crossfire.

[jasper]

Originally Posted by RoadDad

At first glance I thought it was a Crossfire.

exactly, and yet somehow it looks even worse

[LARRY]

As mopho posted:

"Compared with a 911, this thing handles like well-upholstered field artillery."

Dan Neil of the Los Angeles Times, you're my new favorite car reviewer...

[Corvus]

Somebody please tell me why Australia gets the V10 TT RS6 Audi and USA doesn't? Where's the logic?

[frostylocks]

seems like the 4 door uber sport-sedan is getting to be a crowded market.

if this panavomit thing sells for $150ish....

don't know what it is going to sell for, but that new Aston Rapide gets my vote for my dream sedan. to me, that one looks so sexy and probably drives ok as well.

[Cegan09]

They keep trying to make every car look the same, and it works when you have a small line-up, but just comes apart when you expand. With just the Boxster Cayman and 911, it worked, they looked close enough to the same, but distinguishable enough to tell them apart. They then tried to make the Cayenne and Panamera look the same, and i think they tried too hard. It really looks like they took a 911, and tried to keep the design while stretching it, and it just didn't come out well.

just my take on it.

[Vexige]

I was recently talking to a friend who's married to a very successful portfolio manager from Wall street. Somehow, the conversation shifted to cars. She "complained" that her husband gave her fully loaded "sooo overpriced" MB S550 for her b-day when they just appeared on the market and continued, saying how much he hates cars and driving (he refuses to drive on highways) and how horrible he is as a driver... Guess what is he driving? Porsche Cayenne Turbo...
That said, I'm sure Porsche will sell every Panamera they’ll make; there'll be a waiting list to get one. Who cares what 0.5% of the drivers, so called "car enthusiasts" (I'm one of them) think about it?
As to "Yes, the Bentley Flying Spur is faster, with a 202-mph top speed, but the Panamera Turbo would obliterate the Bentley on a road course." this statement left me a bit puzzled... It was probably ment to be a joke? How many Bentleys and Panameras will actually see one? Or how many of them will be acquired by their owners for their ability to corner?