The Porsche Panamera Turbo S: The Ultimate Dadmobile?
December 07, 2011, By Jason Avant 4 comments
"You wanna know the really cool thing about this car?" The delivery truck driver who'd brought it down from L.A.'s enthusiasm didn't help to calm my nerves. I was about to take possession of a 2012 Porsche Panamera Turbo S, a car valued at $185,000—a car that can reach a top speed of 190 MPH—and drive it down a busy Orange County freeway. The cockpit looked like the driver's side of Speed Racer's fabled Mach 5. The interior was white—and I was going to haul around two kids in the thing for a week.
When the Porsche PR rep had agreed to lend me the Panamera after I'd pitched her the idea of reviewing it from a dad's perspective, I was giddy. Now I was feeling queasy, plagued by visions of me calling her from a Tustin body shop, telling her that the crumpled bumper didn't look that bad, I'm sure it can be replaced.
I snapped out of it. I grinned at the truck driver and responded to his question: "There's a really cool thing about it?"
Let's be clear on two things. Most of us will never be able to afford a Porsche Panamera Turbo S. And, really, the car's sort of review-proof. This is, after all, a full-blown high-performance sports machine. It's Porsche-ness is unmistakable; it's got the front and rear-end of a Carrera, those signature headlamps and the elegantly sloping nose and tail. It's powerful—550 horses—and refined (I was told that the Burmester stereo alone was valued at $5,000).
And it's got something extra: two additional doors, and two bona fide backseats. Real backseats, not the kind that are only good for holding your golf clubs or polo equipment or a briefcase stuffed with $100 bills or whatever it is that people who drive $185,000 cars haul around with them. The Panamera is half LeMans racer, half family sedan. It's the griffin of the Porsche lineup.
I was lucky; it was mid-day, and the 405 freeway was relatively empty. I extended the retractable spoiler, flicked the automatic transmission over to manual (Porsche's name for this is PDK, or Porsche Doppelkupplungsgetriebe, which in German means "twice the badassery", I think), and shot down the on-ramp like a bullet. Double-digit speeds in a matter of seconds. And the coffee cup in the cupholder didn't spill a drop. I wove around slower cars, looking for worthy opponents: a guy in a Mustang GT slid up next to me, eyeballing my ride. A slight push on the accelerator, and he faded from sight. (I believe I actually yelled "MEEP MEEP!!", in my best impression of a certain cartoon road runner.)
So yes, the Panamera is fast. But would it work as a family car? To see how it would do carrying our kids and the usual gear, I had two trips in mind.
NEXT: First trip—Disneyland
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