The Autofiends theme is “no boring cars.” My personal taste is even more extreme, limiting my enthusiasm about most new cars to the seriously weird or rare (or Italian). That’s why the new Panamera is unenthralling. It’s a very lazy design job, the same way the Cayenne is. I’d argue that both are merely the “Porsche version of a ____.” It’s hard to argue with the Cayenne’s success, and there’s no doubt that relative to the rest of the car market, the Panamera will rake in piles of cash too. I’m not in a position to argue with Porsche’s product decisions, because they’ve got the golden touch and I have an unpaid Mastercard bill. My rant continues after the jump.
The reality though is that the Panamera looks like soggy bread. Yes, it’ll go like stink. The Cayenne can bring a curled smile to the face of even the most curmudgeonly bastard (me), especially the turbo versions. But I thought Porsches were supposed to be stunning? Maybe not. The 911 looks how it has always looked – it has, in a sense, expanded the definition of beauty to include itself. And since that happened so long ago, we just take it as a given now that the Carrera looks great (Jeremy Clarkson not included). The Cayenne is atrocious looking, the Cayman is a frog, and the Boxster has an unfair rep for being the poor man’s Porsche (in S trim, it’s also my favorite Porsche, so whatever).
The details on the Panamera are all Porsche – because that’s what a “Porsche version of a sedan” would require. So the headlights and hood look very good, though they’re nicked from the Carrera GT. The door handles are straight off the Porsche parts bin too, and the rims are very much Porsche characteristic. But the sum of the parts is completely devoid of character. The side view, the roofline, the hatch slope, and the rear of the car are all thoroughly uninspiring. Perhaps it’ll pull of the Maserati Quattroporte’s trick of looking way better in person and on the road than it does in pictures. The bottom line is that this is a sedan built to look like a modern 911. Why? Because Porsche gets nervous when its cars deviate too much from the formula. They don’t want another 924/914/944/928/968 experience, so whatever that does to design, so be it.
And while it’s not very nice to judge a car by its owners, you know that 98% of the shoppers for the Panamera will be asshat lawyers and bankers, survivors of the economic black hole. They’ll arrogantly sit around the lounge in the gym and braggingly repeat analogies they read in Road & Track in 1972 – that it “handles like it’s on rails” and “is better than the 911 Turbo I leased a few years go.”
All that said, in twenty or thirty years, my tune is almost guaranteed a change. Maybe Porsche will have returned to its Tartan plaid seat roots, with spartan interiors and howling air-cooled flat six engines. Probably not. But the same way the Ferrari 456 Venice is an orgasm of a car, the future might look more fondly on the Panamera, because it is in fact so non-Porsche.
There are loads of examples of cars that were, in their time, just not so hot. I have no idea what the Citroen SM by Maserati cost when it was new (a damn lot), or if it was a good deal relative to competitors. So it doesn’t matter that the Panamera will cost a bloody fortune to even get a Volkswagen-derived V6. Similar examples: the Volkswagen Phaeton, Renault R5, ass-engined Renault Clio V6, Citroen C6, Mercedes Viano “luxury” van, Toyota Crown, rotary-powered Mazda wagons, RWD Rover 75 V8, and all many of other bad decisions that are just delightful in retrospect.
So right now, I’m liking the Panamera about as much as I like splintering wood. But after it goes out of production, I imagine I’ll be a big fan.