Porsche Panamera: a four-seater GT
CAR Online has snared the best spy photos yet of Porsche's new four-seater, the Panamera. Think of it as a four-door version of the 928 - a four-seater GT to bridge the gap between the hard-core 911 sports car range and the Cayenne 4x4.
We won't see the Panamera in showrooms before 2009, with prices stretching from £54,000-£84,000. Read on for the full lowdown on the most exciting sports saloon to reach the market in years.
[Source: CAR Magazine]
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A Porsche saloon, you say? So is it a stretched 911?
Nope. The Panamera uses a variety of different components plucked from across Porsche's product portfolio. You need the strongest suspension and brakes going? Sure, borrow them from the Cayenne SUV. You need a lightweight, sports car chassis? Here, use parts of the 911 Turbo platform.
It'll be front-engined and rear-drive, at first at any rate; there's some talk of a four-wheel drive version in the pipeline. Porsche hopes to build 20,000 a year at first, but that figure sounds a bit conservative to us.
So is this going to be a proper saloon?
The Panamera is Porsche's answer to the CLS; a genuine four-seater set in the GT mould. The front-engine packaging and long wheelbase are designed to free up lots of cabin room for the four deep-set passenger seats, while the hatchbacked boot will top 475 litres (more with the rear seats folded).
Don't think this Porsche will be a soft comfort-oriented four-door, though. Much of the body will be made from lightweight aluminium and engineers have told CAR Online that the weight will fall around 1800kg. With direct-injection V8 power and up to 500bhp, it's not going to be slow.
Go on, what's it going to look like under that disguise?
This official design sketch points to a low-slung, glamorous sports saloon. Okay, we accept that so many design sketches end up being pie-in-the-sky - but we hope that Porsche will know better than to make the Panamera as dowdy as the Cayenne.
At one point in the design process, Porsche considered suicide rear-hinged back doors, but it has stuck with four regular saloon doors, as witnessed in these exclusive pictures. It's unclear at this stage whether the spoiler on this prototype will make production; if it does, it's likely to be an automated pop-up item.
