Porsche Panamera Review & Prices

The Porsche Panamera is a big, sleek, and very fast luxury saloon which can be had with fuel-saving plug-in hybrid power, but which is always fast and sharp to drive. It is very expensive, though, and imagine what else you could buy with that money. A low-miles second-hand Bentley, perhaps?

It’s like the Arsenal of fast saloons — always putting in a great performance, but that price tag — and the ruinous options costs — means it’s never quite reaching the top of the table.

There are a lot of potential alternatives to the Panamera, from the hot AMG versions of the Mercedes E-Class and S-Class, to the BMW M5, the Audi RS6 (which is now out of production but you can still find some new ones about) and of course Porsche’s own all-electric Taycan.

While the original Panamera was rather ugly, looking like a 911 had mated with a 1990s Corvette, this version is far more slick and sleek to look at, and while you might never call it properly beautiful, it’s certainly handsome and looks like it’s worth every penny that you paid for it.

While there’s a basic Panamera with a 2.9-litre V6 turbo petrol engine, many buyers will be tempted by the Panamera 4 e-Hybrid, which not only has four-wheel drive, but also a 60-mile electric range if you charge it up – it’s a plug-in hybrid you see. It also has a very nice 470hp and so can bully its way to 60mph from rest in 4.1 seconds, although it took 4.3 seconds in our test.

As standard you get clever Matrix LED lights, which can even change the shape of their beam to suit the road ahead, and there’s active anti-roll suspension, which not only keeps the Panamera level and flat through corners, but which can even tilt one side of the car up a bit as you open the door, making it easier to slot into the driver’s seat.

Once you’re in there, the Panamera’s cabin looks and feels pretty terrific, even if you do have to spend some extra — and our test car came with a whopping £38,000 options bill — to get the nicest materials. There’s plenty of space, and properly luxurious comfort, for four adults, but the boot is on the small side and even with folding back seats, it can be hard to make the most of the Panamera’s practicality.

The big touchscreen is easy to use, and looks great as do the main digital instruments, while things like the three-spoke steering wheel feel great to the touch. So it’s odd, then, that Porsche also insisted on filling the cabin with polished black plastics, which attract dust and scratches like you wouldn’t believe.

The Panamera 4 e-Hybrid has a pretty good balance of performance, as it’s much quicker than the basic car, but you won’t have the massive running costs of one of the V8-engined models. Once you’ve flattened the big battery and go for a long motorway drive, you should be able to get about 35mpg, which isn’t bad for something this big and luxurious.

The Panamera is great on the motorway too — comfortable and quiet, aside from a little tyre noise — and it’s better in town than you’d expect, thanks to rear-wheel steering that massively tightens up the turning circle.

Of course, a Porsche should be most at home on a twisty road, and so it proves — the Panamera feels tight and taut through the corners, but has enough suspension finesse to cope with British roads. Basically, it feels like a bigger, roomier 911 sports car and praise comes no higher.

If that sounds like the sort of luxurious, practical performance saloon you need, check out the latest Porsche Panamera lease deals or other Porsche lease deals. You can also browse used Porsches from our network of trusted dealers, and remember that when the time comes for car-changing, Carwow’s here to help you sell your old car, too.

Basic prices for the Panamera V6 start from just under the £90,000 mark, which looks like decent value compared to what you’d get from BMW, Mercedes, or Audi for a car with equivalent performance.

You have to remember though that Porsche’s options list can easily add the price of an entire other car to the cost of a Panamera, so once you’re done ticking boxes, it’s very easy to price your four-door Porsche up to BMW M5 or Audi RS6 levels.

In fact, for the price of our Panamera 4 e-Hybrid test car, we could have bought a lightly used Bentley Flying Spur saloon…

The Panamera is handier in town than you’d expect, but brilliantly fast and sure-footed on the open road too – although the brakes make some weird noises

In town

The Panamera is a big car, and very wide, but it’s not as bad to drive around town as you might think. The one thing to remember is that the driver’s seat sits really, really low down, so if you’re not very tall, then you might want to adjust the seat up a bit so that you can see out better.

The visibility out of the Panamera isn’t bad, even if the rear glass is a bit shallow and the door pillars are pretty chunky, creating a forward blind spot. The brakes are excellent too, allowing you to come to a nice smooth stop in town traffic, and they’re not grabby and sudden as other hybrid-engined cars can be — mind you, they do make some really weird creaking and squeaking noises at times.

At low speeds, the Panamera hybrid tries to use the electric motor as much as possible, but that’s no hardship as it has plenty of zip. You’ll need the rear-axle steering option, though, as that makes the bulky Panamera much more manoeuvrable in tight spots. In fact it cuts the turning circle to 11.4 metres, which is about the same as an average hatchback.

The steering is slightly heavy, as you’d expect from a sporty Porsche, but it’s not enough to turn the Panamera into a chore around town. It’s even comfy over bumps, and the excellent refinement means you can escape from the hustle and bustle around you.

On the motorway

When it comes to accelerating up a motorway on-ramp, make sure you hit the Sport Response button — that turns everything in the Panamera’s hybrid system up full for a few seconds, giving you all the acceleration you could possibly need. This thing absolutely flies, so merging with fast-flowing traffic is never going to be hard.

Cruising at speed shows that the Panamera is really comfy and quiet, with only a bit of noise from the tyres to disturb you, though this is kind of inevitable with those big, wide tyres.

In terms of long-range economy, it’s not too hard to average 30mpg in the Panamera, and if you’re making full use of the long-range hybrid battery and charging it up lots, you might even do a bit better than that. You might even see 35mpg if you’re sticking to the fuel-saving Hybrid mode and avoiding the naughty fun of Sport Plus. That’s maybe not an exceptional figure, but it’s good for such a big, heavy, fast car, and compare that with the 22mpg you can expect from a petrol-only Audi RS6.

Cleverly the adaptive headlights not only do automatic dipping, but they can actually recognise when the lane you’re driving in is getting narrower, or when you’re passing through roadworks, and change the beam spread to suit.

On a twisty road

Switching the Panamera to Sport Plus mode gives you a kind of ‘Maximum Attack’ thanks to the suspension getting stiffer, the steering weighting up, and the engine and hybrid system turning up to 11.

Even with the suspension’s stiffer settings, the active ride system keeps things comfy and the Panamera isn’t put off by bumpy British B-roads. That same system also keeps the body level in corners, and stops the Panamera dipping its nose under braking.

While those brakes can be noisy, the ‘e-brake booster’ means that the Panamera does a better job than most of blending its physical brakes with electric motor regenerative braking.

The Panamera might be a big saloon (or a massive hatchback…) but if you’ve driven a 911 sports car, you’ll recognise some of the same sensations coming back through the steering and the suspension. You’d know it was a Porsche even if you drove it blindfolded (don’t try this…) thanks to responses that just feels sportier than what you get from other car brands.

There’s a magnificently solid and capable feel to it. It’s fun too — that rear axle steering isn’t just good in town, it also helps the Panamera to turn in more aggressively, and the power from that hybrid system means you can punch out of the corners with serious speed. Is it a favourite road, weekend morning, back-road blast kind of car? No, but if you’re doing a longer journey on the motorway you might find yourself taking a detour on the way to find some twisty roads for a bit of fun.

It’s smooth, effortless, and quick — with a finely-tuned hybrid system — but the Panamera is also fun, and it makes you feel special.

One annoying thing, though — you can’t lock the gearbox in manual mode. It will always change up at the redline.

Spacious and comfortable for four people, but the boot is quite small and not massively practical

Space up front is fine in the Panamera, but storage space isn’t brilliant. There’s a small storage area under the armrest, with a 12-volt socket and an odd little divider panel that doesn’t seem to serve much purpose. There are two cupholders in front of that. There’s another small space in front of those, under a cover, in which you’ll find the wireless mobile phone charger (which is cooled to stop your phone overheating) and some USB-C sockets. The glovebox is at least big, and it’s felt-lined so that things won’t rattle around, and the door bins are fine.

Oh, and remember that active ride system? It can actually make the Panamera tilt up slightly on the driver’s side as you’re getting in, so you get easier entry to the driver’s seat. It then drops back down again once you close the door. Neat.

Space in the back seats

The Panamera’s back seats have decent knee room, but while headroom’s okay, it will be tight if you’re over six feet tall. The likes of an Audi RS7 has more room in the back.

You can have a three-seat rear bench, but the middle rear seat is so narrow that you might be better off with the optional individual two rear seat layout. These seats are sportier looking, and they recline and even have lumbar support and a massage function.

There’s a lidded storage space, with adjustable cupholders, between those seats, and two more USB-C sockets as well as a folding armrest with some more storage inside.

Boot space

Depending on the model, the Panamera’s boot lid is as big as 494 litres, or as small as 421 litres. Either way, there’s quite a big lip to lift anything over. It’s a square shape, but it’s not very deep so you won’t be able to get anything tall in there. The luggage cover is easy to remove thanks to useful handles, but while you can release the backs of the rear seats for folding by leaning in through the boot, they’re a bit awkward to actually tumble flat. They split in 60:40 formation, with a central flap for loading through narrow items. There’s good load space when you do (and a handy 12-volt socket too) but nowhere to stash the luggage cover, which is annoying.

Fantastic quality (if you pay extra for nice materials) and an excellent touchscreen, but still some fiddly menu items

The interior of the Panamera feels like it has really, really high levels of quality. Mind you, our test car came with a ridiculous £38,000 of optional extras, so that probably helps. You could buy a whole extra car for that.

Everything really does feel solid, but make sure you order the extended leather pack as the standard vinyl looks too cheap.

The big main screen is really nicely integrated into the dash, and it’s pretty easy to operate as well as being slick and quick. There are also some nice Porsche-y touches, such as performance driving data. There’s Apple CarPlay and Android Auto too, which work well with the Porsche software.

The main digital dials are nice and clear, and you can easily change the settings with proper physical buttons on the steering wheel, which itself feels great to hold and is electrically adjustable.

You can have an optional extra screen on the passenger side, but that’s pretty pointless, as is the screen for the rear seats, aside from the fact that it gives those in the back temperature controls. The rest of the time, everyone’s just going to be on their phones.

The toggle gear selector, mounted behind the wheel, is fine but why is the engine start button buried over on the right-hand side of the wheel? There are some actual physical buttons — very nice ones — for some of the air conditioning controls, but other controls are on a haptic feedback touch panel. This is better than having them on the touchscreen, but it’s slightly fiddly and cheap looking.

It sounds mad, but to simply change the direction of the flow coming through the air vents, you not only have to adjust that on the touchscreen (rather than just turning the air vent itself) but you even have to press a climate menu button on the centre console first. Madness!

Meanwhile, the little pod on top of the dashboard, where the clock is, reflects annoyingly in the windscreen.

The acres of shiny black plastic trim (what used to be called Piano Black) are also a nuisance, as they’re magnets for dust and fingerprints, and they scratch and scuff way too easily.

As standard, the Panamera and four-wheel drive Panamera 4 come with a 2.9-litre turbo V6 petrol engine, with 353hp.

Our test car was the Panamera 4 e-Hybrid, which uses the same engine with a big 21kWh battery, giving it an electric range of up to 60 miles and 470hp.

There’s also a 4S e-Hybrid with 544hp, a GTS with a turbo V8 engine and 500hp, a Turbo e-Hybrid with the V8 and 680hp, and a Turbo S e-Hybrid with a massive 782hp.

Officially our Panamera 4 e-Hybrid test car has emissions of just 40g/km and fuel economy north of 250mpg. That economy figure is taken from a laboratory test in which plug-in hybrids always return crazy numbers, whereas your real-world economy is likely to be closer to 35mpg on a long journey. That 60-mile electric range means you can do lots of your short runs on electric power, if you’re diligent about charging up of course.

This e-Hybrid model can save you a bundle when it comes to Benefit-in-Kind tax if you’re getting a Panamera as a company car — there’s a £9,000 annual bill if you’re a high earner (and you will be if you’re getting a Porsche) but that’s around half the tax cost of a petrol-only Audi RS6, and £4,000 cheaper than the non-hybrid Panamera.

The Panamera hasn’t been tested by Euro NCAP but it does come with lots of safety equipment as standard, including a surround view camera, lane change assist, rear cross traffic alert and exit warning, active cruise control, and Matrix LED headlights so it should be pretty safe.

There are two standard ISOFIX anchor points in the rear seats, but the ones in the front passenger seat are an option — but only cost £150. Why not just make those standard, Porsche?

Porsche has an exceptional reputation for quality, which is good, but the previous Panamera hybrid models did experience some issues with the hybrid system, which is not so good. Either way, you’re going to be paying for some very expensive servicing with one of these.

Porsche finished in fourth position, out of 32 brands, in the most recent Driver Power customer satisfaction survey, which is an excellent result, and owners were very happy with the quality of their cars. That said, 36% of them did report problems and faults, and that’s quite a high figure.