Porsche Panamera 4 e-hybrid Sport Turismo Review: Gratification Delayed

Auto123 reviews the Porsche Panamera 4 e-hybrid Sport Turismo.

When discussing an automobile, it’s not often you’ll be able to mash the words performance, fuel economy, generous space and ideal family vehicle into the same thought. If it were easy to combine these assets in a vehicle, all manufacturers would do it. And yet, Porsche manages the trick with the Sport Turismo version of its Panamera.

Note that our specific model for our test was a 2019 version (there are a few cosmetic changes for 2020); which we had been scheduled to drive earlier in the year. However, the pandemic pushed that back to July. Here's our story, then, of gratification delayed.

Master of many trades
This family-friendly version of the Panamera is surprising on more than one level. First, the performance, because after all we're dealing with Porsche. Using technology developed for the Porsche 918 that runs on the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Porsche slipped under the hood of this model a 2.9-litre turbocharged V6 engine that on its own produces 330 horsepower.  It's backed by a 14.1 kWh electric motor that produces the equivalent of 134 hp, giving your a total of 457 usable horses. Add to that a generous 516 lb-ft of torque and you get a machine capable of cruising at 278 km/h and getting to 100 km/h from a stop in 4.5 seconds.

These performance capabilities don't make the model particularly greedy either. In a week of mixed testing with about 75 percent of our time spent on highway, we managed to maintain an average fuel consumption of 8.3L/100 km.

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