Quote:
Originally Posted by 911pcars
Mike,
Nice photos and text. Your criticisms were few. That right?
I suppose the size of these vehicles allows the factory to trim some weight and introduce a lightweight RS version at 3800 lbs? 
Sherwood |
Yes, very few criticisms... they really did one hellava job engineering this thing if you get past the looks and over the fact it is a new segment for Porsche. The Panamera has had the gestation of a Blue Whale, but the end result is impressive.
A few things I didn't mention in my article:
* The car is electronically speed limited based on tire pressure (which is constantly monitored). If the tires are a few PSI too low, the car will only do say... 165 mph. If the tires are at the proper inflation number found on the door jam, it will do 188 mph. A few journalists were mentioning they could only do 170 mph. Turns out those cars were running lower air pressure than the others!
* The headlights are adaptive. Not only do they swivel left/right, but they also raise the projected beam based on speed (they look further down the road). At night, on the Autobahn, they illuminate the road like aircraft landing lights!
* The ignition, seatbelt, seat cushion, and door striker all "communicate" with each other to determine whether the start/stop system needs to shut down the car momentarily (at a stoplight) or until the ignition is restarted (for a driver change).
I think the Porsche engineers mentioned that there were six different sophisticated computers monitoring hundreds of sensors on board.
- Mike