Car Throttle

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far away, called the 1980s, I remember a cover of Car & Driver Magazine that had a retouched version of a Porsche 911, stretched to have four doors. The headline stated flatly: “What Ferrari Fears To Do” or some such. Essentially that was a jab that everyone, who was anyone, back then, was making some sort of high performance four door, and although Ferrari had hinted at it, they had recently said no.

The implication from C & D here was that Ferrari were a bunch of pussies, and couldn’t keep up with what Stuttgart could, should and would do with barely breaking a sweat.

Here we are, 25 years later, and over that span of time, Ferrari has gone on to make a mark so deeply incised into both the racing and the sportscar scenes that very few will be able to match it, let alone surpass it. And at the same time Porsche has turned into a company that is soon to become a brand for Volkswagen because they screwed the pooch financially while simultaneously backing out of front-line racing activities to produce stuff like the Cayenne SUV, Carmella Sopranos preferred ride. And a Porsche four-door has finally arrived.

Now on the cover of the latest Road & Track Magazine that sits on my coffee table, is a picture of said Panamera. And inside there are specs and impressions and more shots of the just released into the world Porsche.

I picked it up, glancing through the shots … so, – my God, this is an ill-proportioned beast … and the detailing … Sweet Jesus …

And quickly move on to the specs. The first thing I notice is the price. These mofos will START at price of 89,800 dollars US. And it goes up from there. 132,600 is the top end Turbo model.

I thought back to not 8 hours ago I was reading a Mercedes-Benz press release for their just released E Class Estate (what we yanks refer to as a station wagon), and the memory of this entry jumped out at me:

E 500: V8, 5461 cc, 285 kW/388 hp, 11.1–11.2 l/100 km, CO2 258-260 g/km, 7-speed automatic transmission, from € 70,150.50

Now, for essentially the same price, which car would you rather have? How much would you like to wager that by simply putting on the biggest stickiest Auto-X slicks on that Merc wagon, you’d kick that four THOUSAND pound four door sedan so far into the toolies that Lewis and Clark couldn’t find it?

Welcome to a new and irregular feature on Car Throttle: I Predict!

So, with Porsche hanging by a slender financial thread, and with a big ticket, big weight, big ugly boat of a car coming onto the market in the worst downturn for cars since Duesenberg kacked, here’s what I predict the future for the Porsche Panamera will be:

Oblivion.

Photos from Flickr users SOCIALisBETTER and Tomas Caspers.