2017 Porsche Panamera Review: First Impressions

CARS.COM — The idea of a four-door luxury car from Porsche no longer creates the kind of stir it did when the Panamera first debuted as a 2010 model. The brand is as much an SUV-maker as a sports car-builder nowadays. The new second-generation 2017 Panamera improves on its predecessor’s styling and debuts revamped cabin controls that place a big emphasis on touch-sensitive technology. We got a look at it at the 2016 Los Angeles Auto Show.

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The original Panamera wasn’t exactly handsome. Its roofline was too upright and the liftgate design wasn’t sleek enough for a Porsche. That’s been fixed with the 2017 Panamera, which has an arcing roofline that ends gracefully at the car’s rear. The look closely resembles the brand’s iconic 911 sports car, which is something that couldn’t be said of the prior Panamera. The extended-wheelbase Executive version loses some of the regular-length model’s nice proportions, though; its rear side windows are very long.

Sitting in the Panamera is unlike sitting in any other flagship luxury sedan. The cabin wraps around you in a way that a BMW 7 Series or Audi A8 does not. The roofline is low, though there’s still enough headroom for taller drivers, and the center console is within easy reach with an electromechanical gear selector in its center. Leather, carbon fiber and chrome are used throughout, giving the cabin the feel of a true luxury car.

The prior Panamera, like other Porsches, had a button-heavy control layout, but the 2017 Panamera’s all-new interior makes a big departure from that past with a new 12-inch dashboard touchscreen and touch-sensitive controls with haptic feedback on the center console. The touchscreen supports Apple CarPlay and its menus are organized on the left side of the screen. You can even control the position of the center vent’s louvers by moving your finger around the screen. That last point seems like a “feature” that will get old fast, but overall the screen seems well organized. However, we’ll have to wait and see how easy it is to use the console’s touch-sensitive controls when driving; in other cars we’ve tested we’ve found that they can be bothersome.

The rear seats are angled backward slightly so you sit with your knees up a bit. Headroom is good, even with the sloping roofline, and there’s decent legroom for taller adults. There’s substantially more space to stretch your legs in the Executive version.

There’s a good-sized cargo area beneath the Panamera’s big liftgate, and with the rear seats folded there’s 46 cubic feet of cargo space. This gives the Panamera significantly more cargo versatility than a traditional full-size luxury sedan.