Panamera GTS Review.."Gatsby's Car"

[motordavid]

If I hit a big Lotto, this would be on my short list for serious, long range road work. I spotted an S version in our CC parking lot the other day, but don't know the driver; will have to check it out. Worth a read as Dan Neil is a very good writer, imo. Sorry, I can't get photos/links to copy & paste on the site anymore...
GL, mD

2013 Porsche Panamera GTS Review: The Car for Today's Jay Gatsbys? | Rumble Seat by Dan Neil - WSJ.com

JAY GATSBY'S CAR was a Rolls-Royce. We're clear on that, right? Not a Duesenberg. A cream-yellow Rolls-Royce. It's right there in the book.

Director Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby" hits the prole-plexes this winter, and it appears Gatsby's car has been recast as a 1929 Duesenberg J Sport Phaeton.

Oy. With respect, Baz, the Rolls-Royce is one of the book's central metaphors. It was a British luxury car, and one of the most fantastic displays of American Anglophilia imaginable, owned at the time by people desperately trying to scrub up and give themselves some class. Gatsby is a Veblenian antihero. So there.

And, honestly, Baz, F. Scott Fitzgerald couldn't have been more explicit. The Rolls-Royce runs down Myrtle Wilson, the book's sad, grasping everywoman. You want him to draw you a picture?

An American-made Duesenberg—from Augie and Fred's outfit in Auburn, Ind.—would mean something else, wouldn't it? And not only that: It's entirely possible that Fitzgerald, who loved cars, had in mind a Springfield Rolls-Royce, one of the several hundred cars built in Massachusetts in the 1920s when Rolls, then in Derby, England, couldn't keep up with demand from the pushy Yanks. In other words, a sham Brit. But we'll never know, because Zelda wouldn't stop talking.

All this got me thinking: What if you were to set "Gatsby" in the present day, in our own morally bankrupt Jazz Age? What car, then? Well, if it's running people down you want, look no further than the Porsche Panamera GTS.

Oh no. Oh my. Ye gods. This thing is a beast. I've been around the Panamera a while now and I can never quite not register how big it is when I see it again, in its full grudging presence. It's just under the Euro 5-meter threshold for length but it's nearly 2 meters wide (76 inches). You don't want to see this thing coming at you in the crosswalk.

Our test car was the Whore of Babylon edition, also known as the GTS, with embroidered headrests, red seat belts, murdered-out 20-inch wheels, LED-glowing script stenciled into the polished door thresholds, and a sporting 430 horsepower at the flywheel.

The Panamera is Porsche's full-size, four-seat, fast-backed executive sport sedan, competing with cars like the Mercedes-Benz CLS, Audi A7, Maserati Quattroporte, Aston Martin Rapide and the BMW 640i Gran Coupe. The Panamera, which debuted in 2009, is built in a lovely little atelier in Leipzig, Germany. The 300-hp V6 base model ambles to 60 miles per hour in 6 seconds. The 550-hp Panamera Turbo S hits the same speed in a rather more eventful 3.6 seconds, thanks in part to the effective but kind-of-pointless launch control.

2013 Porsche Panamera GTS
Base price: $111,000
Price as tested: $147,345
Powertrain: Naturally aspirated direct-injection 4.8-liter, 32-valve DOHC V8 with variable valve timing/tift and dry-sump lubrication; seven-speed automated manual gearbox (PDK); rear-wheel drive with brake-based torque-vectoring differential
Horsepower/torque: 430 hp at 6,700 rpm/384 lb.-ft. at 3,500 rpm
Length/weight: 195.7 inches/4,232 pounds
Wheelbase: 114.9 inches
EPA fuel economy: 16/23/19, city/highway/combined
Cargo capacity: 15.7 cubic feet
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I haven't driven the Turbo S, but the regular Pannie Turbo gains speed like crazy, with a sudden, overvaulting shudder of gained momentum. If you threw a kettlebell across the gym, you would know how the kettlebell feels.

What's a GTS? This is where buyers find themselves in the opium den that is Porsche's car configurator. The price spread between the base Panamera ($75,850) and the top-o'-the-line Panamera Turbo S is a nice round $100,000. The GTS—the sportiest nonturbo in the Panamera line—has a base price of $111,000, but by the time you tick all the boxes you oh so rightly and desperately want—like the life-changing Burmester sound system ($5,890), the hotter 20-inch rims ($3,375), and the active antiroll system with rear-wheel torque vectoring (PDCC including PTV Plus, a mere $5,000)—the GTS can brush $150,000. That's just great, Gatsby.

The GTS's star attraction is its torque-rich 4.8-liter V8, the same dry-sump, alloy-block engine as in the all-wheel-drive Panamera 4S but let off the leash a bit, with a higher redline (7,100-rpm fuel shut-off), lumpier cam-lift logic, more aggressive transmission software (quicker, harder shifts available from the dual-clutch PDK gearbox), and additional cold-air boxes with active shutters behind lower lateral bumper intakes. All that's good for an additional 30 hp over the 4S and another 15 pound-feet of torque. The official specs from Stuttgart say 0-60 mph in 4.3 seconds, but at the business end of this Swabian wrist-rocket it feels a little quicker than that.


“If Fitzgerald's masterpiece were set in our own morally bankrupt Jazz Age, a GTS might run down Myrtle Wilson.”

There are three things you can say for certain about the Panamera. One, when it came out, Porsche purists hated it like one would hate a neighbor who keeps beagles. It was a sedan, j'accuse, and it was kind of brutal to look at: lantern-jawed, heavy-browed, beetle-backed, and just plain big. There's still nothing delicate in the car's features. It's still shaped kind of like a pint of O-negative. But I think enthusiasts have forgiven its outside on account of its famously overachieving insides.

That brings us to Two: Despite its tonnage, the Panamera is still the best-handling, most accessible huge sedan out there (in my book, next come the Cadillac CTS-V and the Maserati Quattroporte). The GTS extends the lead with routine 1-g cornering; a brilliant, tack-sharp electric steering system (variable-rate logic is standard, speed-sensitive Servotronic is cost-extra); and excellent brakes. Whilst transporting your white-shoe friends out to East Egg, the Panamera GTS glides serenely on its air springs (double wishbones in front, multilink rear). When you flip the switches to Sport Plus—freeing up the engine, transmission, the adaptive air-suspension and chassis systems' software—the GTS gets loud, low (minus-15mm ride height from Sport), firm and feisty. This thing just pillages a country road. The off-throttle overrun sound is like some kind of Martian stock car.

Three, the Panamera has a wonderful, architectural-quality interior, leather-stitched to a fare-thee-well and glowing with sloped banks of beautifully detailed switches and indirect cabin lighting. The display graphics and instrumentation aren't quite as evolved as those in the new Audis, but who buys a 430-hp car for graphics? No, this car is all about those rare moments of on-ramp impunity. The GTS's deep-socketed sport seats hold you in place as the lateral acceleration tries to squeeze you out the window.

Is it a modern-day Gatsby's car? It could be. Fitzgerald chose the Rolls because it was big, fast, exotic and expensive, but also because it said something important about Gatsby. I don't know what it would mean if Myrtle got run down by a Panamera. One thing's for sure: It would make quick work of it.

[Naz24]

I drove the panamera GTS around the track at a Porsche event, I gotta tell you-- car is awesome. It drives really well for its size (although you do somewhat feel the size). I'd drive one if I was a bit older.

[PersonaNonGrata]

I got the chance to drive a Panamera S at a Porsche event. It was quite an impressive vehicle, though I am still not sure about the looks and the utility of them.

Here is a video of it being driven by a Porsche racing driver from their racing school in Georgia.

Link