2024 Porsche Panamera Softens Up without Losing Focus (2024)

Cars that boast high levels of luxury often mollycoddle at the expense of sharper handling. Since its inception, the Porsche Panamera has tended toward the opposite, offering genuine agility—as one would expect from a car with a Porsche crest on its hood—by sacrificing a measure of on-road comfort. Seeking a broader performance envelope for the 2024 Panamera, Porsche hopes to remedy that by giving its luxury sports sedan a little extra, you know, luxury.

What's New Across the Panamera Lineup

The third-generation Panamera comes out swinging with changes to nearly every corner of the car. Sure, you might not notice that its visage has been altered, but it has. The front end picks up a new nostril above the license-plate holder that seeks to deliver better airflow. The silhouette has changed a bit, but honestly, it's still Very Much A Panamera.

Inside, the 2024 Panny does a better job standing apart from its forebear. The dashboard underwent a big ol' digital rejiggering. The twist-to-start "key" on the left side is now simply a button. The gear level for the standard dual-clutch automatic transmission has been removed from the center console, replaced by a less-than-ergonomic nubbin behind the steering wheel. To fill that shifter-sized hole on the center console, Porsche has . . . added more gloss-black pieces. Hopefully your fingertips don't produce any oil. The air vents are still controlled through the infotainment and remain as convoluted as ever, but they do look a little better.

Porsche has finally relented on the mandatory analogue center gauge—perhaps the biggest potential heresy. In its place is a 12.6-inch digital gauge display, and to its right is a 10.9-inch central display that handles all the traditional infotainment duties. An optional second 10.9-inch screen mirrors that capability for the passenger, and it's engineered to prevent a driver's prying eyes from further distraction.

Porsche Active Ride's High-Tech Brain Trickery

We saved the most fascinating change for last. Porsche Active Ride is a new suspension option for plug-in-hybrid Panameras that takes advantage of the E-Hybrid's new 400-volt electrical architecture. Two-valve dampers and a single-chamber air spring are employed at each corner, which may sound pretty normal at first. Each damper is connected to an electrically driven hydraulic pump, which can adjust the flow inside the damper up to 13 times per second, changing rebound and compression on the fly (and individually, at that). This system also does away with the front and rear anti-roll bars entirely.

Porsche Active Ride is a strange beast to experience. It can raise the entire body by 2.2 inches for more comfortable entry, thrusting itself skyward upon your opening the door, like a race car on air jacks. It can firm up the dampers on one side of the car enough to remain flat under a surprising amount of lateral load—something we experienced firsthand with an emergency-lane-change test.

The wildest part by far is what Porsche calls "acceleration and braking comfort." The suspension will counteract the physical forces of acceleration and deceleration by raising or lowering the front or rear ends to suit. Under medium braking, the nose rises and the tail squats, and it feels like you're sliding into home plate. Smash the gas and the nose pitches down. It runs counter to every neuron in your brain, but the result is surprisingly comfortable.

The stuff that Porsche Active Ride can do both looks and feels like witchcraft—but it's all for comfort. The system's full capability can only be unlocked in Hybrid Auto mode; moving to Sport Plus for, say, track activity, disables most of those interesting features. And that makes sense, since you actually want to feel what the car is doing and how it's reacting to your inputs.

Panamera Turbo E-Hybrid on the Track

The only place we got to drive the Active Ride–equipped Panamera Turbo E-Hybrid was on the track, and our experience of its full breadth took place during the cool-down laps around Circuito Monteblanco near Seville, Spain. But at full clip, with Sport Plus engaged and all the mechano-trickery relegated to the wayside, the Panamera feels as dialed-in as ever. This big boy can still dance.

As the solid-white pit line disappears, a healthy jab of the throttle produces gut-busting thrust. Between the twin-turbo 4.0-liter V-8 and the electric motor tucked inside the eight-speed PDK dual-clutch transmission, the Turbo E-Hybrid makes a meaty 671 horsepower and 686 pound-feet of torque, enough to complete the sprint to 60 mph in a manufacturer-estimated 3.0 seconds.

The dual-clutch automatic does an impressive job of keeping the V-8 in its sweet spot on the track, but immediate bursts of electric motivation act as double-insurance, ensuring the car is never caught with its pants down. When it's time to bring everything back down to cornering speeds, the Turbo's gigantic 16.5-inch front iron rotors do so in a hurry, and there's no awkward blend between the car's 88.0-kW max regeneration rate and the good ol' friction-based grabbers. (Should you desire EV cosplay, we estimate the battery's 21.8 kilowatt-hours of usable capacity will carry you about 40 miles.)

If Active Ride tried to fight the forces of physics at track pace, it would get weird in a hurry—and Porsche would probably have to supply airline sick bags as standard equipment. Instead, we're subject to the same pitching and leaning that our lizard brains expect, although the suspension does a commendable job of not delivering too much of it. Snappy steering feels like the car can pivot on a whim, but even when our driving line was right on target, the Michelin Pilot Sport 5S summer tires (275/40ZR-20 front, 315/35ZR-20 rear) supplement their impressive grip with an awful lot of howling.

Porsche said it purposely hadn't swapped out the track tires all week—a torture test, of sorts—so your rubber might be a bit quieter, but rest assured that even after several days of track use, there was still plenty of stick amid the clamor. Porsche also didn't say how much the new Turbo E-Hybrid will cost, but we estimate it landing somewhere between a boat and a house, although it depends on the house and the boat. We'd wager on a starting price in the ballpark of $150,000, since an even more powerful (and more expensive) Turbo S E-Hybrid is probably in the cards.

Panamera 4 on the Street

There many not be as many whiz-bang gadgets on the base all-wheel-drive Panamera 4, but it still made for an excellent companion on the tight, sinewy roads leading from Seville's city center to the track. Even without rear-axle steering at the ready, this Panamera felt smaller than its full-size dimensions would indicate—until we hit one of those lane-and-a-half-wide goat paths, at which point we appreciated how easy it was to place the front corners with precision. Those front-fender humps work wonders in that regard. However, the standard lane-keeping assist's desire to keep it between the whites will remind you in several annoying ways if you stray from that path.

The twin-turbocharged 2.9-liter V-6 under the Panamera 4's hood isn't going to beat your inner ear into submission like the Turbo's V-8, but it's still a perky little thing in its own right. For the new generation, output rises to 348 horsepower and 368 pound-feet of torque, and 60 mph arrives in an estimated 4.5 seconds with launch control. There's a sufficiently meaty torque curve, so even if the eight-speed automatic won't downshift because that lower gear will bring the engine too close to redline, there will still be a good bit of motive force on tap. And as far as V-6 engine notes go, this pill is pretty easy to swallow.

All Panameras now come standard with a two-valve air springs and two-valve adaptive dampers, and the resulting ride quality occupies a wider spectrum than before. In its most pliant modes, the Panamera still feels inexorably sporty; feedback will still work its way to your tuchus, but the whole shebang feels a bit more comfortable than before. In Sport mode and beyond, there's more than enough stiffness for spirited (but legal!) goings. Sadly, tire noise on Seville's roads is also in ample supply; there's a lot more cabin roar than we'd like, and to our ears it sounds like more than you get from your average luxe competitor.

It's not like the base Panamera is cheap, but it's vastly more reachable than its e-fed siblings. If you're cool with rear-wheel drive, expect to pay no less than $101,550, tacking on an extra $7000 if you want two more driven wheels.

Whether you're going for broke or not, the 2024 Panamera definitely achieves Porsche's goal of delivering a more luxurious large sports sedan. It might not be that much posher, but all these new tricks hiding under its skin allow it to perform a wider range of duties with the poise we've come to expect. Envelope, expanded.