Left Lane News drives the new Porsche Panamera. Really neat and good info.
Def. worth the read.
By Leftlannews:
Porsche has either not read “The Art of War” or it doesn’t believe it. The German sports car powerhouse has declared that its upcoming Panamera four-door will take on – and beat – just about everybody. Few prestige cars have escaped the sights of Porsche’s Panamera and it has effectively declared war on every potential rival: Its neighbors in Stuttgart, Munich and Ingolstadt, to the English, the Italians and even the Japanese.
But it’s not just rival four-doors, because Porsche believes its Panamera is so good it will comfortably tackle everything from pure-bred sports cars to luxury limos to everything in between. At a recent technology workshop for the upcoming Panamera, the head of its driveline development group, Dr Heinz-Jakob Neuβer, insisted the 197-inch-long grand tourer was so strong it would create its own unique place in the world.
“On the purely emotional side, the competitors are Maserati Quattroporte,” he admitted.
“On the sporting side, it’s M5, AMG, RS Audis and so on. We can compete on economy against cars not so strong with engines For example, Mercedes-Benz E- and S-classes and for comfort driving, it’s 7-Series and S-Class. For sports driving, the only competitive rivals are in the near sports car segment.”
So, everything, then. It’s an incredibly broad brief for a company that has never built a production four-door before but, after a day digging around its engineering and being chauffeured by Porsche’s test drivers, they are claims that may be surprisingly realistic. With the base Panamera S priced below many of its foes and the Turbo topping out as an all-wheel drive, 500-horsepower bullet, Porsche may yet prove to have a point. But running fast in a straight line is just one of the weapons in the Panamera arsenal. There is an active suspension, including a breakthrough air-suspension system and the automatically activating anti-roll bar that debuted on the Cayenne. There is an all-new double-clutch seven speed gearbox that bears little resemblance to the one that recently debuted in the 911, there clever engineering touches in the body and there are, as usual for Porsche, enormous, strong brakes.
Dedicated four-seater
Unusually, though, the highlight is the Panamera’s cabin. On a fleeting viewing, the interior is both a surprise (Porsche is not known for in-cabin innovations) and a hint of depth to come. Because of the way the entire body is designed, it will only ever be a four-seater, but each of those four seats is pretty special. Unusually, Porsche has spent months designing a car that is equally comfortable in the back and the front. The driver’s hip-point is just 30mm higher than it is in a 911, which promises unusual levels of athleticism in a big four door. Its designers wanted it to give it a low, wide stance to help is agility, but combining this with rear-seat comfort for tall people proved a challenge.
So instead of running the exhaust underneath the body, Porsche’s engineering ran it through the transmission tunnel. This dropped the floor closer to the road to help with cornering, but the taller tunnel it left is the real reason why the Panamera will only ever be a four seater. Instead of being a hindrance, though, Porsche’s designers have made it an interior feature. It starts with a center console high in the front, housing beautifully crafted buttons and resting above the seven-speed double-clutch gearbox, and it tapers away to an armrest in the rear.
With a steering wheel more vertical than you’ll find in the M5 or anything from AMG, the Panamera makes the driver feel alone in a cockpit, even when the car is full of people. The dials are easy to read, the instrument layout is logical and the only real quirks are the cheap-looking steering-wheel buttons and the counter-intuitive way the gearshift buttons and even the shift lever work.
One of the tricks that make the rear seats work so well is that the front seats are fairly narrow, giving more straight-ahead vision to the people in the back. That doesn’t rob them of any support, though, because they cope with all the lateral loads the Panamera can dish out – and that’s a lot of load.
It’s not just a supportive place to be, either, because it’s clear that Porsche has taken great pains designing the cabin, from the front armrests that extend on to the B-Pillar to the chunk it has sliced out of the back of the same pillar to stop rear-seat occupants scuffing their feet on it getting in and out.
In spite of the low, swooping look of the body, the Panamera has enormous reserves of rear headroom and both rear seats fold flat to lift the cargo space from enormous to astonishing – and not just “for a Porsche.”
Performance from the start
A lot of this has been designed in from the outset. Porsche has two major advantages over other high-performance four-door makers. Firstly, it started from a clean sheet of paper and, secondly, it didn’t have to design the chassis for the fiscal and engineering restraints of high-volume commercial success. (It could also be argued that Porsche had these advantages at their fingertips when they did the Cayenne, too, but it was a modification of a VW design and Porsche was out to make cash, not redefine a segment.)
Firstly, it decided interior size was a priority, which ruled out aluminum for the chassis. Aluminum, Porsche’s gurus explained, needed thicker sections in things like the pillars and the floor sills, which rob the occupants of room. Instead, Porsche has used its status as a Krupp Steel center-of-excellence and went for a high-strength steel cabin and attached everything to it by aluminum or magnesium subframes and cradles.
Still, Porsche has used its steel a little like a race car, with a strong steel center, with almost everything at either end of it bolted or bonded on is aluminum. Around 44 percent of the Panamera ends up being aluminum, such as the panels and some of its most significant suspension parts are incredibly light. For example, the entire rear subframe is just 44 lbs., around half the weight of a steel version.
While 3,894 lbs for the base Panamera S rear-drive V8 might not sound light, it’s about the same as Jaguar’s all-aluminium XJ sedan – and, at five meters, it’s physically about as big. But that’s just the start of the explanations. Normal all-wheel drive vehicles have a center differential, a shaft leading forward to a differential. From there, they normally have driveshafts running underneath, in front of or behind the engine to turn the front wheels. With the Panamera’s bosses demanding it sit low, the Panamera needed some engineering tricks. It got them.
Instead of a center diff, it takes the front diff’s drive forward off a simple beveled gear at the back of the gearbox. And instead of trying to position the differential around the engine, they simply put the differential inside the engine. It’s integrated into the sump to give the driveshafts the most direct access to the wheels and to keep the engine sitting low.
While Porsche finally debuted its PDK (double-clutch) gearbox in the 911, it bears little resemblance to the Panamera’s seven-speed unit. For starters, the 911 gearbox is short and fat, while the Panamera needed something long and skinny. So, while they share the same double-clutch pack on the end of the ‘box, the Panamera unit uses only two shafts to the 911’s three, and is 22 lbs lighter.
None of this will work without the right suspension setup. Most of the Panamera’s setup is made from aluminum, but it carries active anti-roll bars at both ends that disconnect automatically in a straight line to give maximum comfort, but reconnect to lend support in corners. Its air suspension carries another breakthrough, too. Normally, the front suspension airbags carry two liters of air (the rears carry 2.2). When you push the Sport button, only the dampers stiffen up, while the air springs keep doing their thing. Push the Sport Plus button to get maximum attacking performance and a valve closes inside the airbags to halve their volume, instantly stiffening the springs.
That explains how and why it goes and handles, but it’s not everything. Times are changing and even Porsche recognizes its environmental responsibilities, which is why there’s a hybrid version in the wings for next year. A Porsche hybrid? After the recent Cayenne Hybrid announcement, it comes as little surprise.
Even without it, Porsche claims the Panamera will be the most economical vehicle of its kind in the world. There is start-stop technology to shut the engine off at stops, plus low rolling tires and an on-demand steering pump. The start-stop system is particularly clever, automatically switching the motor back on when if the air conditioner runs out of chill. These technologies combine to squeeze additional range out of each gallon of gas.
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Originally Posted by 1SICKLEX
