Here's Why a Used Porsche Panamera Is a Sub-$30,000 Bargain

this is a 2012

porsche

panamera

and it's cheap, very cheap, under 30k, cheap and t

here

's nothing wrong with it, it doesn't have ultra high miles, it's not damaged, it's just that the

panamera

has gone from being a car that only the The coolest ultra-rich can afford something. which you can now buy

used

for less than the price of a Camry and today I'm going to review this Panamera to see if you should. I borrowed this panamera from cnc motors, which is an exotic car dealership

here

in southern california. has an amazing inventory of incredible cars, from muscle cars and classics to multi-million dollar exotics.

They have one of the best showrooms of any dealership in the world and you can check them out by clicking the link in the description below so let's talk about panamera the panamera. It first came out for the 2010 model year 10 years ago, it's hard to believe but the original panamera models were S versions with a 400 horsepower v8, there was also a 500 horsepower turbo v8, the following year Porsche It added a 300 horsepower V6 to the lineup of models like this one. This car and those early panamera v6 models tend to be the cheapest on the

used

market today, but don't be fooled by the fact that this is the entry level panamera base model, this car still does 0-60 in 5.6 seconds, which is pretty good. for a full size luxury sedan and it also looks quite modern as Porsche hasn't really changed the Panamera much over the years, plus this car still drives like a Porsche and has a surprising amount of luxury features, especially for less than 30 thousand dollars.

So today I'm going to take you on a tour of an early Panamera v6 and show you all the interesting quirks and features of what is probably one of the best offerings from Porsche on the market today. to get it out on the road and drive it and then I'll give it an excellent rating. I'm going to start with the Panamera's quirks and features on the interior and the first thing you notice when you get in. this interior is quite nice even though this car is almost 10 years old and starting to get cheap it has the most modern

porsche

interior in fact this was the first car to debut the latest porsche interior design when it came out the Panamera for the first time. came out and the result is that the interior still looks modern, refreshed and updated, even compared to the new Porsche models that are almost 10 years newer than this car, unfortunately this particular Panamera has a bit of an interior color situation. old woman. a beige interior that has fallen out of favor very quickly in the world of luxury cars, is mixed with this light wood on the steering wheel, on the dashboard and on the center console, and also has these leather seats with steering wheels designed to be more comfortable and look more like old school leather, most Porsche models didn't have it, you had to specify it and the person who originally bought this Panamera did, but despite the relatively modern interior of this car, there are some Interesting quirks worth noting.

I'm going to start. There is one thing that has always bothered me about Porsche models of this era and that is the steering wheel. Now this interior has leather everywhere, wood, aluminum, everything looks great, top quality materials, then you get to the center of the steering wheel and it's this cheap beige. Plastic is such a strange place to cheapen the center of the steering wheel that you're looking at all the time, but that's where Porsha decided to go cheap. It seems like such a strange decision to me that it doesn't actually look that good. nice and it's like the only bad stuff in this whole interior but it's right in your line of sight and then another cool quirk here between the two front seats you have a cup holder so the driver and passenger can argue about who stays. use the cup holder, but in case this turns into a serious argument, good news, there are more cup holders, they're just hidden, they're on the passenger side of the dash, push down on this little silver panel and you can take out two. more cupholders and that way the passenger gets two cupholders, but the driver gets the main center cupholder.

Next, something else I love about this interior is to the left of the steering wheel, there is a little sticker that has a speed limit on it. You may be wondering what this is about, this car has all season tires and with the all season tires that Porsche put on from the factory they were not rated to go over 150 miles per hour, now this is not a problem for the most. German car manufacturers because they electronically limit their cars to around 150 miles per hour, but Porsche doesn't believe in electronic speed limiters, so this car could go over 150, but the tires weren't intended for that and Porsche solved that problem by putting a small decal on it. next to the ignition switch to remind you not to exceed 150 because your tires could have a problem.

It's an interesting way to solve what could be a pretty catastrophic security problem, and then something I've always liked about this interior, if you look. On the door sill you can see that there is an armrest like on basically all door sills, but the interesting thing here is that if you open the door, the armrest continues about two inches to the B-pillar, there is just a little bit of space there for more arms. the ability to rest now, obviously, Porsche didn't have to do that. They could have simply finished the armrest in the door panel, which would have been cheaper and easier, but they did it because that's what you do in a luxury sedan when you're committed to attention. detail, it's a pretty nice touch and then moving to the center of this interior, you can see that it has this giant center console full of buttons, just like the latest Porsche models do, although they are evolving a little bit from this, but this was the last one. and the best Porsche had in 2010.

The problem I've always had with this center console with all the buttons is that if you don't have many options, you get a lot of blank switch buttons that would have been there if I had a more expensive car and this car is great proof of that. You can see that there are four blank spaces on the driver's side and four more blank spaces on the passenger side and every time you get in you basically remember that you skipped a lot of the other options that would have filled your center control stick now, the Automakers that integrate all of their functions into their infotainment system don't really have this blank button problem, but Porsha at the time was committed to creating buttons for basically everything and that meant that if you didn't get everything, you had some.

Blanks. Now, next, another important notable element on the center console, you can see the gear shift lever. This car has a Porsche PDK dual clutch automatic transmission. That transmission came out for the 2009 model year. The Panamera came out for the first time. 2010, so it was one of the first cars to use pdk. Now the pdk is excellent, it is very robust, very reliable and changes very quickly. I'll talk a little more about it when I drive this car a little more and finally our The last interesting element here is the center screen. This center screen is almost 10 years old, but you can see that it is surprisingly responsive.

You touch it and it does things almost immediately. It's not as big as modern screens and you can't move around. Swipe map very easily, no pinch to zoom for that sort of thing, but it's a relatively responsive screen, not as frustrating as cars from the mid 2000s where you try to change the radio when it broadcasts one beep and wait. Like eight seconds, this is a lot better than that despite its age and that's a pretty good thing when you buy a heavily depreciated used luxury car, you don't have to compromise as much as you might think on the infotainment technology and what's next.

Upstairs we move on to the rear seats in the original Panamera, which in my opinion are more interesting than the front seats partly due to the size. I'm now six foot three six foot four and as you can see, I fit in perfectly here. my head is a couple of centimeters short of hitting the roof, my knees fit behind the front seat fit perfectly back here, which is unusual for a car like this and that's because while the Panamera was being developed, the director Porsche executive was a tall man. the name vendelin vedaking and during development he issued an edict that this car had to be able to seat you comfortably in the back and that is why there is so much head and leg room in the back of the panamera, but this caused a problem, see porsche?

I always wanted the Panamera to look like a Coop because entering the world of sedans was a big step for Porsche and they wanted to tie it to the look of their well-known coupe models like the 911, but it would be difficult to make a Coop fit tall people in the back. and it's because of this tall people edict that the original Panamera looked a little strange because they had to keep the high roof line along the rear seats and then had to taper it down very quickly behind. the rear seats to look like a chicken coop and that's what contributed to the Panamera's kind of strange styling in its early model years.

No one really loved the way it looked, but that's why Porsche wanted to be able to seat four adults in this car. comfortably and this at the expense of its appearance now another interesting thing in the back seat of the panamera is that the rear seats are individual seats, here back you do not have a bench for three people, but two individual seats, which means that the Panamera was a four-seater, now this is no longer the case. The Panamera is now offered with a center seat if you wish, but in early models you could only get it this way, with two seats in front and two in the back.

So, of course, you might be wondering what exactly is taking the place of the middle seat since it's not here and the answer is, well, it's got this nice strip of wood trim that looks nice on the front of this molding, you can push this little one. lid and reveal a cup holder or further back you can open this storage compartment and you have another cup holder and a bit more storage and a power outlet, nothing particularly special about all this, of course you can also drop the center armrest between the seats . if you want more comfort, you can open it up for extra storage, but the general answer is that Porsha didn't really do that many cool things with the extra space they had in the back, but instead they wanted to turn it into a four-seater.

I think to emphasize that it was not intended to be a boring family car but rather a high performance touring car that just happened to have four doors and the next notable element here are the screens, these are not aftermarket screens, it was a very option. Porsche's unusual so-called rear-seat entertainment system. You can see the Porsche logo when you turn on these screens. This screen back here allowed you to select USB auxiliary music or a CD if you wanted and there was also something called cross linking which was some type. from the TV tuner, you had to have some extra things installed for it to work, but you can see that there is a USB port and an auxiliary port under the screens that you can connect to and then you can listen to whatever music you want on the back, but of course, Porsche wouldn't sell this car with only rear screens and then you had to go buy your own headphones.

Actually, that sounds like something Porsha would do, but not in this case, the headphones are hidden in a small cubby behind the back seat headrest. Reach back and you can take out the headphones. You can see that they are wireless headphones and they say Porsche on them which makes them even cooler. These aren't just stupid boring headphones, you get Porsche branded ones and then we move back. out of the Panamera and into the trunk, which is actually a hatchback, something I've always found interesting and distinctive from all other luxury sedans, and when you open it you can see that it's actually a cargo area and not a trunk.

Open to the passenger compartment and the rear seats fold flat, meaning you can get a really large cargo area here if you need to transport larger items in your Porsche luxury sedan. The result is that the Panamera is almost as practical as a real station. The truck is a little less practical thanks to its sloping rear design, but otherwise you have the cargo capacity of a truck back here and I've always felt that's kind of strange, it's almost like Porsche squeezed a truck into the full size . luxury sedan market without anyone noticing, but that's exactly what it is.

It's also worth noting that with the cargo hatch closed you can see the sloping design of the rear of this car, which was a big point of contention when it first came out, but in some waysmode A trend started, this was one of the first cars with sloping back design along with the Honda Accord Cross Tour in 2010 and many more cars adopted this design language later and this is a trend that still continues today although most modern cars with inclined backrest. The cars look better than the original Panamera and finally, another element worth mentioning here is the spoiler.

The spoiler is currently in the up position, but you can press a small button on the center control console and that will lower the spoiler if you want it to. to go in stealth mode, but press the button again, the spoiler goes back up and you'll get a little more attention, which is probably what you're looking for if you spend less than 30 grand on a used Panamera and we're finally moving. under the hood on the panamera and in the engine bay and the first thing that catches your eye here is how much empty space there is under the hood, obviously that's because this is a v6 model, panameras were sold with larger v8 engines that would have taken up more space under here and you can really say that it became cheaper.

This is the engine bay equivalent of those blank switches in the Interior, by the way, another interesting piece of information about the Panamera, as Porsche enthusiasts and car enthusiasts know. Porsche has three digit model codes that distinguish all the different models and generations, such as the 993, 996, 991, etc., this era of the Panamera was It is called the 970, the 970 is not as well known, but you can see on this little sticker on the hood that says 970 on the front, which was the internal Porsche model designation for the original Panamera and finally, while I'm here, I want to talk about styling.

I've never liked the look of the original Panamera, mainly for the reason I mentioned that the roofline goes too far and is flat and then curves down so quickly that it always seemed strange and awkward trying to turn a sedan into a coupe , but if. I mean, in my opinion, they never improved it dramatically. The newer Panamera models look better, but it's not like they've turned it into a truly beautiful car; Overall, it looks the same except for a few modernized things here and there and a slight touch. New treatment on the roof line. Honestly, this car looks like a new Panamera to most people and if you buy one of these for 30 grand or less, a lot of people will ask you where your newfound wealth came from because it looks very similar and, in my opinion, is that if you're looking to impress people and you're trying to push yourself to afford a newer Panamera, no one can tell the difference, you'll impress people with this one so much, it doesn't look great, but neither does any. of the Panamera really work and those are the quirks and characteristics of the original Porsche Panamera.

Now it's time to take it out on the road and see how well it handles driving the original six-cylinder Panamera. Now I have a lot of experience. Driving these, I've spent a lot of time in Panamera models. I've always been impressed with the six-cylinder. It's not a particularly fast car. It's not really that exciting, but it's fast enough. You know the turbo will blow you away. off, but this one is more than fine for Florida commuting, it's not fast but it's fast enough, it definitely gets up to speed in traffic reasonably quickly and one of the big benefits is that this car would feel sluggish if it weren't for the pdk, the dual.

The automatic transmission with clutch really goes a long way to making this car feel fast enough and really nice, so in terms of acceleration I think this car is totally reasonable, yes it makes more sense that you would want a turbo to get more performance. but these are the cheapest so if you want a Panamera this is a good place to go now as far as handling goes two thoughts here um pro and con the pro is this car really drives like a Porsche. I have driven a lot of these they are always impressed by how flat they feel in the corners how balanced the steering feels it is a step above the seven series the s class that sort of thing I remember when the original cayenne came out porsche promised that The Cayenne would make the , the downside is that it's a big car, so while Porsche is able to neutralize the size when taking curves and curvy roads, they can't do anything about the physical size limitations of the car in a big city where you are. in small spaces. places and that was always something that bothered me, um, about the Panamera, it's just big, it basically has the footprint of a Range Rover, it's a big vehicle and even though you go around the corners, it's agile, you can forget the size when you're . trying to squeeze into a tight parking space don't forget the size now at a stoplight this car feels very good very luxurious I will say it doesn't have the same comfortable feel of an s class so if you are looking for a car which is very cosseting and very luxurious and very quiet and smooth, this is most of those things, but it's just not at the level of an s class or a 7 series, ultimately this is a great car and the fact that it has less than 30 Grand is just amazing and that's especially amazing because I get in this car and push the buttons.

I feel like everything still feels as tight, as well put together, and as well designed as it did 10 years ago when this came out. the turn signal still feels firm the steering still feels good the suspension all the buttons work the switches the car is well made and I think it is a pretty reliable car if I were to consider a 10 year old luxury sedan I would be worried about Mercedes and BMW I used to worry about Porsche in terms of ownership costs for the price, it's an unbeatable car, especially if you want people to look at you and think you have a lot of money, there are a lot of people out there. who are in that world um and this is absolutely, I would say this is the number one car for that at this price and that is the original Porsche Panamera v6.

This car is not perfect, it is not as nice or as modern as the last one. panamera but it's not that far away it doesn't have the same luxury equipment as a new panamera but again it's relatively close and not as fast as a v8 or turbo model but it's not exactly slow but the real benefit is the price there probably isn't any car in the world where you can spend less than thirty thousand dollars and look as rich as you could if you had a used panamera and now it's time to give this one a Doug score by starting with the weekend categories and styling the panamera. from this era doesn't look very good and gets four out of ten acceleration from 0 to 60 in the low 5 second range and gets a 5 out of 10.

Handling is surprisingly sharp given the size of the car and gets a 6 out of 10 The fun factor is okay, it's reasonably fast and sporty, but it's still a large v6 sedan and gets a 5 out of 10. The fun factor is quite a bit cooler than other large sedans of this era and gets a 6 out of 10. a total weekend score of 26 out of 50. The following are the daily categories and features. The Panamera is reasonably well equipped and scores a 6 out of 10. Comfort is good, but not as good as rival luxury sedans and scores a 7 out of 50. 10. The quality is really excellent, they are reliable and good built and get an 8 out of 10.

Practicality is average for a luxury sedan, its larger cargo area is a plus, but 4 seats is a drawback, so it bounces to get a 5 out of 10. finally value and this It's really good, it's amazing how much performance, luxury and status this car offers for under 30 grand and it gets an 8 out of 10 for a total daily score of 34 out of 50. Added up in the Doug's score is 60 out of 100, which which places it here compared to other luxury cars of this era and some relevant Porsches. The first Panamera is really a

bargain

if you can get past the styling and I highly recommend it if you want a family car, but I don't want to settle for the same old boring stuff.