On the Road

First off, a disclaimer: I’m going to be delving into very subjective territory here, talking about the looks of cars. But feel free to slam, jam or harangue whatever I say. After all it’s an opinion piece and opinions are like…well let’s just say everybody has one.

Broadly speaking there are two types of cars:

1. Cars that look good
2. Cars that look bad

The Panamera is Porsche’s new four-door saloon, a first for the company. It falls into category two – automobiles that are aesthetically challenged. The front-end looks like the current 911 (round headlights, etc) the middle looks sleek and sculpted, but the rear looks like Oprah before weight loss.

I think the main sticking point is how the engineers were going to fit four normal adults in relative comfort into something that resembles the 911, since the Panamera is a Porsche and has to have some Carrera DNA. If you’ve ever seen the inside of a 911 then you’ll know it was bound to end in tears. A design brief like that could only drive the entire design team insane or end up with a car that looks like a mutant 911.

Having a car’s visual weight in the rear gives it that pouncing, aggressive look, to appropriate PR-speak. Think BMW Z4 or Mazda RX-8. The Panamera has a lot going on behind but that technique backfired and instead it looks like a 911 with osteoporosis. Comments bandied about from other people I asked involved animal metaphors like “humpback whale” and “cockroach”.

But all is not lost for Porsche’s new model, since there is a third category: Cars which look ugly in photos but not real life.

The first time I saw a photo of the (old, a new hardtop one is out this year) BMW Z4 I thought it had too much pouncing going on as well and looked, proportionally, like a shoe. Long bonnet, hole for passengers in the middle and no rear overhang to speak of.

But there was something about seeing it in person that changed my opinion. Who knows, BMW’s design head Chris Bangle may just be a genius and not the “demonic wrecker of the BMW look for all time”, to quote opinionated BMW fans on the ’net. So since most of us here have yet to see a Panamera in the steel, I’ll reserve my final judgment until that moment.

There’s also another big reason why I may have to grow to like the backside of the Panamera – how it drives. Because if it drives like a real Porsche should (the Cayenne doesn’t count) then who cares what it looks like? Besides, the rear is what we’ll be seeing most of the time.

Tags: car design, Porsche Panamera