Back in the 1980s, Porsche was at the bleeding edge of road car technology and performance with its 959 supercar, an all-wheel-drive twin-turbocharged weapon with more than a passing resemblance to the iconic 911, and a top speed of 198 mph in its most popular Komfort trim. Flash forward nearly 40 years, and Porsche has eclipsed that top-speed figure with an executive sedan. Welcome, everyone, to the 202-mph Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid. How’s this for a green car?
Yes, thanks to a 25.9 kWh battery pack and an electric motor, the new Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid is capable of plugging into the mains and then running about town for around 55 miles on electric power alone, at least according to the optimistic WLTP testing cycle. However, once you deplete that battery pack, you still have a four-liter twin-turbocharged V8 making 591 horsepower on its own. Not a small figure. Deploy the power of both electricity and gasoline at the same time, and the result is a whopping 771 horsepower and 737 lb.-ft. of torque. That’s more horsepower than a Shelby GT500, all put through a dual-clutch transmission and all-wheel-drive.
As you would likely expect, the results of such output seem profound. How does zero-to-60 mph in 2.8 seconds sound? Rapid, yeah? Speaking of rapid, the Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid even has an oddly specific Nürburgring Nordschleife lap record to its name: fastest gasoline-electric hybrid executive car to ever lap the circuit, with a time of 7:24.17. An odd flex, sure, but one that required some interesting optional hardware to achieve.
Let’s start with the available Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires, properly sticky trackday stuff that sacrifices wet performance in the pursuit of ultimate dry grip. Specced in 275/35ZR21 sizing up front and 325/30ZR21 sizing out back, these are some serious gumballs, and were critical to achieving that ‘ring time. So was the optional Aerokit. Thanks in part to its front spoiler and gurney flap, it’s good for an extra 132 pounds of downforce at 124 mph. Subtle, but very functional indeed.
Oh, and then there are the carbon ceramic brakes with 17.3-inch front discs and the wild 400-volt active suspension system. Each damper has its own hydraulic pump to control compression or rebound, and the result is a suspension system capable of completely eliminating pitch, dive, and body roll.
The end result is that the Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid posts childhood supercar numbers, but carries all the practicality of a five-door liftback. There’s plenty of space for rear passengers, a flexible cargo area, all the modern luxury gadgets you could possibly desire, and the option to get leather-clad everything, including the air vent slats. For those of us who can afford the state of the art, it might just be the executive sedan to have. For the rest of us, we’ll just have to wait and see how luxury car depreciation goes. What an impressive feat Porsche’s achieved here.
(Photo credits: Porsche)
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No Sport Turismo, no care.
I configured one the way I’d want it, and it came to the same $250,000 as my 911 Turbo and Lucid Sapphire did. ( Like fantasy football, not researching purchase decisions). If I slip, fall, and land in F-it-ALL money, I won’t know how to choose between the Sapphire and this. If the street to my fantasy house has speed bumps, maybe the PASM wins.
Does anyone else see a beefed up GR86 in the front of this thing?
And in four years, you can buy it at 50% off of what it sold new for!
I’m here for it. I was just looking at how inexpensive 2-3 year old Taycans are. The problem is that I fully expect, until otherwise shown, it to be treated like a 5 year old smartphone, not a vehicle I may have for another decade.
I could be convinced to buy something like this though since it shares a lot of parts with the mainline variants.
I don’t care how fast it is; that there executive blob will never be as cool as the 959!
The 959 was better (and arguably cooler) than the F40 back in the day.
The F40 is more iconic, but the 959 was such an engineering tour de force. I feel like the F40 is much more recognizable but the 959 had a much greater impact in the grand scheme of things. That all wheel drive system was literally decades ahead of its time.
Ferrari emotion vs Porsche engineering. One emotional vs one clinical. You cannot daily an F40 but you can a 959.
Sad that I’ll never be able to afford it, happy it exists. What more could you want from a car, styling be damned.
Still want the childhood dream 959 and know it ain’t never gonna happen.
I was sitting in the parking lot of a country club waiting for my girlfriend to get off from work when a red, thoroughly worn and filthy 959 pulled into the parking spot next to me. A few days later it was there again when I dropped her off. For the next 6 months or so I saw it just about every other day. It was the guy’s daily driver. How awesome is that.
Living the dream…living the dream. If only I had true f-off money.
I’m sure it’s a tech marvel and the performance can’t be questioned, but I cannot understand how Porsche hasn’t managed to make them better looking after all this time.
Here’s a clue: Styling cues from a rear-engined sports car don’t work on a front-engine luxury sedan.
Woof.
I think they look okay now. But maybe that’s just because, I remember how bad the first gen was.
The wagons work for me. Because: Porsche wagon
Parsch Pretty.
.
I personally like the looks of the second gen Panamera a bit more. I feel like they just made the new one more aggro for the sake of being more aggro, but then again that’s what the conspicuous consumption crowd wants. Anyway, the cool thing about Panameras is they suffer from luxury sedan depreciation to an extent. They don’t bleed money as much as Audi or BMW sedans do, but they depreciate way more than any Porsche sports car.
I’ll see certified second gen ones for around 50 grand all day, and at that price they’re a killer buy/have already done most of their depreciating because at least from what I’ve found even the worst examples don’t usually dip much further than the 20s. So I’ll wait 5 years and see what winds up showing up certified, because Porsche’s certified program is one of the best in the business.
I’ve always liked the Panamera and it will never be in my price range but damn that makes me want a hybrid. Zoom effing zoom!