2012 Porsche Panamera Turbo S Agate Grey Metallic on 2040-cars

Think back to high school and your guidance counselor’s assertion that, given the right amount of stick-to-itiveness, you could accomplish anything you wanted. No one believed that. Except, it seems, the engineers at Porsche.

How else to explain a 4448-pound all-wheel-drive vessel that’s able to carry four tall adults comfortably and also hit 60 mph in 3.3 seconds, complete the quarter-mile in 11.5 at 122 mph, and apply lateral forces of 0.97 g to its passengers?

Perseverance in the face of, well, nothing begot the Turbo S, a higher-output rendition of the Panamera Turbo. Very little changes to provide an extra 50 horsepower and 22 pound-feet of torque from the 4.8-liter, four-cam twin-turbo V-8—why ruin a good and insanely capable thing? There’s a pair of lower-inertia turbos—the lightweight impellers are made of a titanium-aluminum alloy—and the engine computer has been reprogrammed to match. 

That might not sound like much, and it doesn’t even make a difference in the 0-to-60-mph time, which can be seen as both a nod to Porsche’s impressive launch-control system and an acknowledgment of the somewhat strict laws of physics. From 60 up, though, the S has the clear advantage: It beat the standard Turbo to 70 mph by 0.1 second; at 100, it opened up a half-second lead; by 150, there was a 1.6-second advantage; and the S got to 170 mph 2.4 seconds quicker, at which point we ran out of space for straight-line testing. On the oval, we managed a drag-limited 191 mph with the Turbo S. Credit the more-responsive turbos for improvements of a tenth or several when starting from a roll and in our passing tests.

Achieving the best results in a Panamera Turbo requires a few additional pieces of equipment, most of which are made standard on the Turbo S: Porsche’s torque-vectoring system, an adaptive and adjustable air suspension, and the Sport Chrono Plus package with its accompanying launch-control function. 

The remarkable thing about the Turbo S isn’t so much its list of accomplishments but that it can achieve them while maintaining the serenity and usability that mark the best GT cars. This is not an either/or proposition, one where the aggressive settings negate the comfort; in Sport Plus mode, the suspension, steering, and transmission are called to attention but don’t call attention to themselves with flinty, darty, or unsettling behavior. There’s nothing keeping this Porsche from being drivable every day.

While the powertrain tweaks are mostly academic in practice, those responsible can hardly be called underachievers. That said, this car breaks not the slightest of sweats, leading us to wonder what more the overbuilt-feeling chassis could handle.

There’s really only one thing the Panamera can’t do: go unnoticed in traffic. If that problem has an engineering solution, we’re sure the Porsche folk would have found it by now. Never give up on your dreams, kids. 

------------------------------------------------------