Gadgetory

okay if you've made the decision to get a Panamera it's likely because it's the nearest thing to a four-door 911 and among Panamera's this one is the nearest of all let's drive the 2012 Porsche Panamera Turbo S and check the tip and one of you who watch these videos know I've got an ongoing love-hate relationship with the Panamera I love to drive it I hate to look at it and what hate to pay for it it's this big punchy looking thing it looks like a beached whale in any color then when you go and paint it Beluga white are you kidding this is one seriously unattractive ride but that's not what we're here for let's get inside now the inside of a Panamera is admittedly a very nice place to sit go driving take a nap just about anything this is a nicely appointed car but it's very familiar at this point we've seen this new style Porsche console which is kind of this high rising thing it gets kind of button crazy down here on this sort of spine of buttons that are in sort of an order but not really they just kind of got everything spraying around here not much has changed up here though since the last Panamera we saw we have a good sort of a 3d flyover view available on the nav screen you've got hard buttons down here for all your major functions but this is also a touchscreen now a Turbo S is only available with one gear box the PDK which is some really long German phrase for double clutch manual and you've got this very simple gate and you've got your shift paddles well really what are these things kind of like aluminized wedges to give you up and down shift on either side it's an ambidextrous wheel Oh check this out because we have a high trim with a PDK you've got this really cool indicator it looks like it's just a nameplate that tells you you got a PDK like you got to be reminded of that but you've got these illuminating indicators Sport Sport+ and launch control on the right because you can put this thing into all those modes partly because we have a Sport Chrono Package that's what the chronometer on the dash tells you if you don't even see the spec sheet you let these two Sport buttons the sport is going to tighten up everything from shifting to throttle response to suspension behavior Sport Plus takes you into a launch control mode and this one's interesting this is your automatic start/stop defeat button so when you come to a stop it's going to shut down lift off the brake it's going to refire you can defeat that here our car has a reverse camera and you can see when I've got that up you also have an overlay of the sonar map front and rear that's a nice blending of in kayson's I like what it's all together like that gauges are almost entirely classic Porsche analog they do the five ring thing but I love the one second from the right that's the roughly four point eight inch round display that can show just about any aspect of the main head unit which they call a PCM you can dedicate that to any part of it like audio there and nav here navigation as I mentioned is a good-looking screen here's how I changed my map view you got a lot of choices here not just the bird's eye there's also weather displayed and a satellite image Bluetooth hands-free of stock and when you do have a phone paired up you can also do a two DP bluetooth streaming as part of this head unit base and whenever you're listening to you've got two output systems the standard rig is a bose system 585 watts i think it is 13 speakers plus a powered sub that's going to be a good sounding system but if you look at the script on our speakers we've got the big boy the $4,000 option the Burmaster sound system that gets you to a thousand watts of oomph through a 16 channel surround sound amp ribbon tweeter technology and a microphone somewhere in the cabin that lets the system a depth to various sorts of noise or interference inside the car in real time oh by the way I find this very telling with all these books on the - this isn't staged this is my work today I shoot about a hundred cars a year most of them full of tech I seldom have to break out this many manuals there's something vaguely unintuitive about the PCM head unit these guys operate okay now the engine of a turbo ass is a big part of the Panamera story when you go to this level that's part of why it costs so damn much it's a 4.8 liter v8 with two discrete turbos a true twin-turbo you can see each one down the side of the motor right there you've got direct injection as well very open which is Porsches very elaborate variable cam and timing system for lifts and events and then on top of all this you've got this beautiful engineering of a Porsche motor so everything's happening here at a high level the results 550 horsepower 553 foot-pounds of torque gets this 43 98 pound beast up to 60 in 3.6 seconds always going through all-wheel drive that's a given on a turbo s and through that PDK 7-speed dual-clutch gearbox Oh check this out Porsche loves the electric controllable rear wings this one slick look how its segmented this reminds me of those IBM ThinkPads from the late 90s where they had the butterfly keyboard it comes up at a certain width and then it expands to give you more bite in the air when it's actually up kind of cool the first thing you notice in this car is you got some real 911 DNA in here that's a pretty good trick now what you're totally aware of is you do have a longer wheelbase and a lot more car longitudinally you're dealing with than in a sports car this car does a lot to get around it all wheel drives really helping of course that's tuned toward performance driving not toward off-road the power comes on real nicely twin turbos are great for that neither one of them has to do everything they only have one bank apiece and they can be very responsive but the power comes on like a bigger engine that is naturally aspirated great exhaust note steering is not electric in this car and say advance but hydraulic accessory driven power steering feels good whole DM car feels good I got to say as much as I think this car is ugly pretentious pompous expensive it sure is a joy to drive okay let's price our big turbo baleen this 2012 Porsche Panamera Turbo S top of the stack is 174 grand that includes most of the tech I showed you as well as the PDK dual-clutch gearbox and all-wheel drive however there are a few things you can add if you want to round it up to 200 first of all voice command for some reason not included 595 ala cart go figure the rear seat charging cradle for your smartphone 890 you could buy every charger and Best Buy for that much money I'd seriously blow off the rear seat entertainment system for 3 grand it's just not that cool burn master audio is 4000 on its own adaptive cruise is 2500 we also have that blind spot warning another 850 and that's not even touching all the bespoke interior stuff you can do on a Porsche you can spend a week just configuring that stuff you