Caving into temptation, Porsche has finally created its first four-door sedan, the Porsche Panamera. For more than 60 years the management of Porsche resisted caving in to the bean counters and sales types who were convinced there was a heaping mound of money to be mined by building a four-door. "Nein," those generations of Porsche CEOs said. "We are a sports car company!" Well, it seems resolve only goes so far. Here's the Porsche Panamera.
The Porsche Panamera is a relatively large, very wide four-door riding on a long wheelbase. It may not be quite as long as some flagship sedans, but it's wider. It's also lower, and that results in an avaricious almost predatory stance, as if it's ready to pounce and devour the autobahn in a single gulp. No formal roofs here either; the Porsche Panamera's lid may have a hump in it, but it winds up in a plunging fastback to the rear bumper.
So the Porsche Panamera doesn't really look like any other sedan on Earth. And it's not engineered like other Porsches. First, discounting any SUVs, the Panamera is the first Porsche to put the engine up front since 1995.
At the Panamera's 2009 launch, the three available models were all powered by Porsche's 4.8-liter V8, with the top Turbo model twin-turbocharged to push output to 500 horsepower. Rear-wheel drive was standard on the regular Panamera, with all-wheel drive a part of the higher-performance and Turbo packages. And the Porsche Panamera needs all the power it can get, with even the lightest version weighing in at around 2 titanic tons.
Just because the Porsche Panamera has four doors doesn't mean the Earth has stopped rotating on its axis or that every hard-core Porsche fanatic may as well sell his classic and buy a sedan at a Hertz fleet sale. The Panamera is still a sports car. It just happens to carry four people and have a door for each of them. That seems logical. And the Porsche Panamera wouldn't be a real Porsche if it weren't logical.
