Porsche Panamera: the lowdown
Porsche’s four-seat sports coupe – the Panamera – has hit the Nurburgring for dynamic testing. Zuffenhausen’s answer to the Mercedes-Benz CLS AMG, the four-door coupe will run V8 and V10 engines. The prototype has appeared some 28 months before its expected world premiere, with deliveries likely in summer 2009. Expect prices from between £50,000 to £60,000. Work is underway on extending the Leipzig plant – home of the Cayenne and the Carrera GT – for Panamera production, which will be complete by the end of 2008. The initial annual production output is likely to be 20,000 units.
How will it look?
Don’t be too horrified by the green hornet prototype, with its stretched Phaeton-esque rear doors. The real thing will look a lot sexier, as this official design sketch shows. Its big wheels and long wheelbase feature on the prototype, even if there’s no evidence of a sleek coupé-like greenhouse yet. The Panamera is the work of Porsche’s new design boss Michael Mauer, formerly of Mercedes and Saab.
Under the skin
The Panamera conforms to the classic Grand Tourer formula, by being front-engined/rear-drive. And that means it doesn’t conform to Porsche’s other sports car layouts, adding to the R&D workload. Porsche is going it alone on the Panamera, despite some whispers that Toyota was approached for a collaboration – and Volkswagen. Porsche owns a big chunk of VW stock, and Zuffenhausen boss Wendelin Wiedeking wields much infleunce with the VW board. There was a plan to twin VW’s proposed C1 luxury hatchback and the Panamera, on a platform with a rear transaxle, a front-to-mid engine installation and a lightweight body architecture. But VW cancelled the C1, so the R&D costs can’t be shared. Porsche’s engineers would have preferred to stick with the transaxle layout. But this standalone solution would have cost more cash, and it’s virtually impossible to add four-wheel drive. By mating the gearbox directly to the engine, four-wheel drive remains an option which insiders expect to materialise in the second half of the Panamera´s life cycle.
The engine room
The Swabians are going to invest about one billion Euros in the Panamera. That´s a lot of dough, but not enough to develop every item from scratch. That´s why the driveline in particular will be derived from Cayenne and Carrera GT. Both engines are expected to switch to direct-injection, and they will also undergo various consumption and emission reducing measures. The displacement of the V8 is tipped to go up to 5.0 litres. As a result, insiders expect the normally-aspirated version to deliver 375bhp and the turbo to hit the 500bhp mark. One rung up ranks the V10. One source suggests that the 5.7-litre version we know from the Carrera GT will be replaced by a less radically tuned 6.5-litre edition which should be good for 575bhp in normally-aspirated and for 700bhp in twin-turbo form. Sounds like wishful thinking? Not when you consider that the new 6.3-litre V8 by AMG is in its most extreme guise rated at 707bhp. Also in the works is a twin-clutch gearbox which will become the transmission of choice for all future Porsches.
The inside story
Like the current CLS, access to the Panamera is via conventional rear doors. The project team had alternatively considered a pillarless aperature with rear suicide doors which looked practical and unique – but this proposal was gunned down by the bean counters. The rear end is a hatchback, despite Porsche wishing to sell 42 per cent of Panamera production in the hatch-averse North American market. Inside, we find four comfortable bucket seats, dual air conditioning and a full-length console loaded with infotainment gizmos.