Porsche Panamera 2011 Review - International

Name: Porsche Panamera 2011 Review - International
Brand: Porsche

Panamera expanding the fleet

Porsche Panamera Diesel and Turbo S

First drive
Stuttgart, Germany

What we liked
>> Non-diesely diesel
>> Brilliant interior design
>> Astonishing Turbo S punch

Not so much
>> Turbo S didn’t feel that agile or composed…
>> … And didn’t ride that well, either
>> And it still looks like, well, a Panamera from the outside

Overview?

>> Expanding the fleet
They’ve been tickling the bejeesus out of the Panamera over at Porsche. That the thing has been selling well doesn’t seem to have bothered anybody, either. They just had tickles lying about the place at Zuffenhausen -- courtesy of upgrades to the similarly-drivelined Cayenne, and Porsche isn’t known for its patience.

There were three Panameras when they launched it: a rear-drive V8-powered S; an all-wheel drive V8-powered 4S; and an all-paw Turbo. But the fleet, and the choices, has grown to include a V6 and a Hybrid, and now it includes a diesel -- which Porsche calls, with some justification, its “long range” Panamera. Oh, and the stupidly fast Turbo S.

The Diesel, at one end of the Panamera performance spectrum, dives deep beneath the 200 grams/km of CO2 barrier (it’s at 167g), which gives it a tax advantage in many European countries.

At the other end of the social responsibility scale is the Turbo S weighs 100kg more than the diesel and explodes to 100km/h in 3.8 seconds on its way to a 306km/h top speed… Fuel economy? An impressive 11.5L/100km… If and it’s a BIG if you can resist using all those horses…

Price and Equipment

>> The taxman cometh?
We Australians pay phenomenal prices for the Panamera, largely thanks to the Government’s Luxury Car Tax, but Porsche at least compensates us by giving us a lot more standard equipment than you get in most countries.

For starters, the Turbo S scores every trick in the Panamera arsenal as standard equipment. The Diesel, at a tick under $200k, has been priced around the Panamera V6 and it scores essentially the same specifications.

Though there are standard Diesel badges on the front doors, they’re a delete option and the engine’s quiet enough that their removal will fool most people who won’t know that the diesel’s cooling requirements meant Porsche also opened up the intake blanks on the outside of the main air intake in the bumper.

The Australian cars have also been upgraded to use Active damping as standard, along with other costly European niceties such as metallic paint, the glass sunroof, bi-Xenon headlights, an automatic rear hatch, a reversing camera, rear side airbags, satnav and a universal audio interface. (Ed: you can probably thank the strong Aussie dollar in part…)

The oiler also picks up a $5300 ‘discount’ from the tax office by slipping its fuel economy below seven litres per 100km, so it costs $194,900 – exactly $5300 less than the V6 petrol version that shares its basic trim specification.

It’s easier to list what the Turbo S doesn’t have for its (gulp) $440,200 – which is a full $60,600 more than the Turbo. It doesn’t have, umm…

Well, it upgrades the Diesel’s package with air suspension instead of steel springs and the dynamic chassis control system that has three different damper settings. It also has adaptive headlights, 20-inch Turbo II wheels and everything you can poke a stick (or finger) at.

Mechanical?

>> Family ties
It would not have made sense for Porsche to develop an all-new turbodiesel V6 when there are plenty of the things lying around in the VW Group family. The pick of them, then, was Audi’s 3.0-litre V6, so that’s the one Porsche adapted for Panamera work. And they’ve adapted it well.

It’s not a machine bred for straight-line sprints (there are other Panameras that fit that bill exceptionally well), because 184kW isn’t going to push 1880kg forward with the alacrity of the turbo petrol motors. What it is bred for instead is rolling, in-gear acceleration and sustained, fast cruising. It shines when you ask it to do that, emitting just 167 grams of CO2/km and using 6.5L/100km.

It might take 6.8 seconds to hit 100km/h, but it still manages a top speed of 242km/h and its sprint from 80-120km/h (4.5 seconds) is a lot more respectable. It’s also rear-wheel drive, which is a rarity among top-end Panameras, and drives through an eight-speed automatic transmission that’s both smooth and fast in its operation.

Naturally, it uses start-stop engine technology (as does the Turbo S), but the really interesting bit is that is uses a variable geometry turbocharger, which can generate 2.5 Bar of boost pressure, to crunch out 550Nm of torque between 1750 and 2750rpm.

No need for raiding the rest of the family’s toys when it came to the Turbo S. In the 4.8-litre, twin-turbo, direct-injection V8, Porsche already had a powerhouse that pumped out 500 horsepower, 700Nm (770 on the part-time overboost) and exploded to 100km/h in 4.2 seconds. So, a few electronic tweaks, a bit more boost pressure and a new, titanium alloy exhaust turbine wheel later and it puts out 404kW, 750-800Nm (depending on modes) and gets to 100km/h even faster, in a supercar-like 3.8 seconds.

Not only that, but its 12.9 second sustained burst from 0-200km/h makes it just a second slower than the pure-bred, carbon-fibre, Carrera GT supercar to the same mark. It also means that sprinting from 100-200km/h takes just 9.1 seconds…

It’s a pretty astonishing set of numbers for a five-seat luxury machine and the mighty mill gets even more credit points when you realize the car weighs in at 1995kg.

There are tweaks to the engine management, yes, but Porsche claims the biggest step forward is the new titanium-alloy exhaust turbine wheel, which is 50 grams lighter – roughly half – than the Panamera Turbo’s turbine. That means it’s far more responsive to the throttle and helps make the 80-120km/h sprint in an incandescent 2.6 seconds. If you’ve been forced to aim for a closing gap in the traffic, there are few cars in the world you’d rather be in.

It couples all of this with an eight-speed PDK (double clutch) gearbox that has not needed any changes from the Turbo to cope with the extra urge.

There is also the same all-wheel drive system, along with Porsche’s torque vectoring system to help keep things on an even keel when you’re accelerating through corners.

Packaging
>> Interior perfected
For all the criticism leveled at the bulbous rear end of the Panamera, nobody has ever leveled serious, credible bullets at the interior. In fact, if you could have an airport-style retractable airbridge in your garage that you could walk through to get into your Panamera (without seeing it!), nobody would criticize the car at all.

The cabin is still a thing of both beauty and practical joy. From the seamless adoption of the 911’s brilliant drinkholders into the dashboard to the astonishingly good rear-seat packaging, it remains top notch in every respect.

At 4970mm, the Panamera is long enough to be considered as an E-segment luxury car, even if it claims the handling of a sports sedan (or, in this instance, sports hatch).

It’s low, at 1418mm, even though it’s very wide, with 1931mm from mirror to mirror. Its 2920mm wheelbase is Maserati-esque in its rear-seat provisions and that translates to tremendous rear seat room.

It’s also helped by lowering the hip point of the rear seats on a floorpan specifically designed to do it. Then, to help the vision, Porsche has made the upper part of the front seats quite narrow, though the front seat occupants never seem to suffer for it.

The rear luggage compartment is more capacious than it looks, too, with the bulbous rear glass seeming to stretch to accommodate loads that look like they’ll poke through and out the other side.

Safety?

>> G-spot
Like the rest of the Panamera range, Porsche takes care of the passive safety with two-stage driver and passenger airbags, side and knee bags up front, curtain bags for all four window seats and an active bonnet system for errant pedestrians.

The array of driver assistance systems is geared more towards sportiness than similar systems from rivals, but that doesn’t mean you’ll easily suffer for small mistakes in a Panamera. Between PASM (Porsche Active Stability Management), all-wheel-drive (in some models), torque vectoring, a rear differential lock and variable aerodynamics, it’s hard to imagine active safety greater than the Panamera can offer.

Indeed, the on-board G-analyst in the Turbo S (and optional with the Chronograph package on other Panameras), showed that we managed to generate more than 1.2g of braking force from the huge carbon-ceramic brakes and 1.1g of lateral force in hard cornering. Of course, it also generates 1.1g of straight-line acceleration on its way to 100km/h in 3.8 seconds, too…

Competitors
>> Jag-ged little fill
For the Diesel Panamera, there are a surprising number of credible alternatives.

Jaguar has just launched a new diesel in Europe in the XF and, if that’s neither large nor expensive enough for you, there’s a V6 turbodiesel in the swoopy XJ as well. Closer to home, Audi offers this engine in the A7 – and that’s even a five-door hatch, just like the Panamera. Upstairs from there, the A8 has a V8 turbodiesel that’s stronger, faster and, well, just more in every way.

Incidentally, Porsche actually looked at the 4.2-litre V8, but while it fitted inside the Panamera’s engine bay, it didn’t do a lot for its weight distribution and its urge demanded all-wheel drive which created packaging issues for the front differential because the engine’s external dimensions were so substantial. It doesn’t fit inside the A7, either.

The V8 diesel passenger car market is on the wane in its stronghold of Europe, though, so they’re not quite benefitting from the same frantic development pace the German makers set with V6s. Still, that leaves BMW and Mercedes-Benz, and both are fierce rivals with long big-diesel history, in both 5-Series/E-Class/CLS bodies and the larger 7-Series and S-Class limos. Over BMW way, you can add the unloved 5-Series GT into the diesel mix as well.

The competition narrows appreciably when you move across to the Turbo S. It’s so fast that you need to be thinking about the hotshops of all the luxury brands, so that means Jaguar’s supercharged V8 XJ Supersports – which is based on the driveline of the XKR-S.

If you’re not so keen an Indian/Brit, you’ll need to wait for BMW’s twin-turbo V8 M5 to arrive next year, though its twin-turbo V12 760iL does a reasonable impersonation of a very, very fast luxury sedan.

Audi isn’t a player w-a-a-a-a-y up here, though Benz’s AMG arm has strength in very big numbers. For starters, there’s the twin-turbo V8 power of the E63, the CLS63 and the S63, and for those who just want overkill, there’s the S65, with a twin-turbo V12 sitting up front.

Where they all pale alongside the Panamera, though, is in handling. The Panamera was designed from the ground up to be this fast, while the AMG cars are converted mainstream Benzes. And the Panamera has all-wheel drive.

This price point is also where the stylishly dignified, understated elegance of Maserati’s Quattroporte starts to bulge with muscle in the form of the Quattroporte Sport GT S. A notable absence of force-feeding technology will leave it, in a sprint to 100km/h, grasping at the air a Turbo S occupied fully a second earlier, but it is a much prettier machine to look at. And it sounds awesome.

It’s also tough to ignore the Bentley offerings at this price, too, though the new Continental GT range is yet to offer a replacement for the undignified-looking Flying Spur.

On the Road

>> Oilers ain’t oilers

The Diesel is brisk, rather than fast but it gives a 1200km range on a tank -- assuming you’re foot is plugged into the European Union’s combined cycle program when you drive it. But its beauty is the way it’s not really a diesel: it doesn’t sound like one from inside the cabin, for sure, and it doesn’t sound much like one from outside, either.

There is a lot of sound deadening in some places, some sound deadening removed in others. It was all part of the cunning plan of Porsche’s acoustic coves to de-diesel the V6 to the point where it had more of a Porsche-ish tone to it.

To a large extent, they’ve achieved their aim, too.

For Australian conditions in Australian cities and country roads with Australian policing regimes, the Diesel Panamera actually should turn out to be a pretty smart choice. Its rear-drive nature makes it feel a lot more alive than it probably ought to be, because the engine and transmission are 60kg heavier than the petrol V6, the extra sound insulation added another 38kg and the chassis and electronics took a 15kg beef up as well.

Yet the 550Nm of torque hides the weight nicely and the steering benefits from not having to manage a differential and driveshafts for the front wheels.

It is quiet, it’s faster than the numbers suggest and it is comfortable without losing its handling poise.

The engine never actually sounds like a diesel, though it doesn’t quite rev like a petrol, so you can only fool yourself for so long. It’s responsive, though, and it mates beautifully with the eight speed automatic. It’s a car best left in automatic, though, because it runs a combination of a wrong-way manual shift lever (forward to change up a gear -- why there can’t be an individually controlled setting in the MMI system to change the direction of the manual shift, I’ll never know…) and two huge block buttons on the steering wheel instead of paddles.

Somehow, changing gear manually never seems intuitive, so it just feels better to let it be...

The brakes are strong and the seats are brilliant. Nothing Porsche has done has dimmed the cleverness of the interior package.

Fair enough, it’s not the fastest Porsche out there, but it could well be the smartest buy of the lot in the Panamera range.

Then there’s the Turbo S; the family’s Captain Extreme. The Turbo has 500 horsepower. For most, it’s enough. For others, the Turbo S has 550 and 800Nm of torque. The Turbo costs $379,600. For most, it’s enough. For others, the Turbo S is $440,200.

It is an astonishing car, brutally fast and it has huge reserves of grip. It’s never quiet, but the noise it makes is neither pretty nor smooth. It’s just always reminding you that it’s ready to go.

And when you aim your foot at the pedal (it has a launch control mode), the thing just flies. We pulled 1.1g from the Panamera Turbo S, which means it accelerates faster than your body would if you fell from of a plane.

We also pulled 1.2g in hard braking and once managed 1.1g in a corner, so driving it flat out anywhere is like being in the start of a car accident until the driver decides it’s time to slow down.

The engine doesn’t need to be in any particular part of the rev range, and it doesn’t need to be in any special gear. It will just hammer, brutally and savagely. It launches off the line so hard, the torque vectoring needs to intervene to keep it all on the road, even with all-wheel drive.

Yet, even with its fully active air suspension, active roll bars and active dampers, it never quite feels as fluid cross-country as the Diesel does. The steering doesn’t have the same direct feedback and the front end is so busy coping with the extra torque of the front diff that it forgets to talk to you when you need information.

But it is capable of crushing distance like no other four seater…

So, if you desperately need a Panamera to be the best one you can get, take the Diesel. If you desperately need it to be the fastest you can get, take the Turbo S.

The S is a mighty, mighty machine, for sure, but it’s not worth more than two Panamera Diesels.

Porsche Panamera 2011 Review - International

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