SciFrog:

... But is the Panamera a sports car? The previous gen surely wasn't and sure enough they were mostly driven by older women around here...

How does one define sports car?  Lots of folks on this board focus on Nordschleife times as an indication.  The 918 was not filling the order books until Porsche was able to break 7 minutes in testing.  Race track pedigree seems important.

My 2010 Panamera Turbo was fast enough on road courses to be faster than half of the real race cars I was pacing in Porsche Club Racing events.  My times would have put me solidly in the second row of the "slower" cars grid, about a second off the pole. On street tires!

My 2014 Panamera Turbo is only 4 seconds slower (1:43) than was my 2011 GT3 RS 4.0 (1:39) at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course with me driving both.  It's really fast around a track and way faster than any Porsche I have ever owned excepting only 962, 918, Carrera GT, and various GT3s.  It's about the same as my old IROC 911RS was on its slicks.  I can suck the headlights out of 90% of the "sports cars" that show up to our PCA driver-ed track events.

As far as I'm concerned, my Panamera Turbo is a perfectly good "sports car" when 4 seats seem handy.  I expect the new Turbo S to be no different.


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Mike

 

918 Spyder + 991 GT3 RS +Tesla Roadster 1.5 & Model S + Panamera Turbo +  BMW Z8 + BMW 3.0 CSi + Bentley Arnage T