We drive the Panamera D from Mumbai
to the doorstep of the president in Delhi to make a case for diesel
“How fast does this thing go?” asks Panna
Singh, who owns the roadside dhaba, looking at the Panamera, somewhere on
National Highway 8 in Rajasthan. “On an open stretch, it can do 240kph,” I say.
“Did you say 240?! That’s how fast aeroplanes fly, isn’t it?” he replies with an
incredulous expression.
Panna Singh and most others living outside
urban India rarely, if ever, see sports and supercars in the league of Porsche,
Aston Martin and Ferrari. The primary reason being that their massive engines
burn 97-octane petrol, which is next to impossible to find anywhere apart from
select fuel pumps in the metros. And they burn this fuel so quickly that they
need a pump like that every 200km. Plus there’s always the risk of uneven
tarmac ripping up the underside of these cars.
The
Panamera D is a proper four-door sport scar with the space to carry four and
all the luxuries of a full-fledged limousine
Porsche now has a solution. The Panamera D.
It’s a proper four-door sport scar with the space to carry four, and all the
luxuries of a full-fledged limousine. More importantly, it doesn’t need any
hard-to-find fuel – it uses the sticky stuff.
But there’s a fly in the solution. The petroleum
ministry is now finalizing a decision to de-control and de-subsidize diesel and
‘systematically’ increase its price by 50 paise per month, in a bid to decrease
the gap between diesel and petrol. But that would mean taking away half the fun
and practicality of having such great cars that run on diesel.
The
centerpiece here is the 8-speed tiptronic S 'box
So, as a symbolic appeal to the president
of India, we’re driving the Panamera D from Mumbai to Delhi, to ask him to stop
taxing and de-subsidizing the fuel that powers this car, as well as the lakhs
of other vehicles that run up and down this country.
To prove that the Panamera is the most
versatile, practical and easy-to-live-with sports car, we’re driving it through
half the country’s length – wading through six-hour traffic jams and
a flooded highway.
And so, the Panamera D. Its 3.0 TDI mill is
the same V6 that’s found under the hood of some Audis and VWs. Here, it puts
out 250 horses and 550Nm. It’s an engine that doesn’t produce a particularly
sweet exhaust note like the V10s and V12s and you might not lower the windows
to hear this one, but the V6 does make its presence felt once you cross
3500rpm. It delivers enough pulling power quite low in the rev band and despite
not having twin turbos, the power delivery stays linear until the transmission
shifts up at the redline.
All the power is transferred to the rear
wheels through an eight-speed Tiptronic S gearbox. Unfortunately, the diesel
doesn’t get the famous seven-speed PDK transmission found in the Turbo and the
S. But the tranny is brisk shifting and always in a hurry to get to the highest
cog. If you’ve not buried the throttle, it’ll even skip ratios, to get to the
economy end of the band. In Sport mode, it holds the gears for longer and
shifts only when the needle has passed the redline marker, if you’ve had your
right foot planted clean into the floor. Downshifts too are quicker in Sport, no
complaints there.
For
everyday use in Normal mode, the steering is light, though a bit on the vague
side for a Porsche
Now, 250bhp doesn’t sound much for a
Porsche; it doesn’t feel much either. It could easily do with some 50bhp more,
especially with a body and chassis that are easily capable of handling that
kind of grunt. For everyday use in Normal mode, the steering is light, though a
bit on the vague side for a Porsche. But Sport mode comes to the rescue once
again by sharpening steering response. The car we had came with an optional
extra of a Sport Plus mode, which sharpens the steering even more, the shifts
get a tad crisper and the adaptive suspension stiffens up and
crisper and the adaptive suspension stiffens up and
lowers the car. On this setting, you can throw the car hard around bends and hold
slides until the end of the corner. It’s a reminder of why Porsche has the
legendary sports car reputation that it does.
Fortunately, what is not sportscar-ish is
the way it handles the bumps on the road. The car just glides over them with a
distant thud, without allowing any of it into the cabin and up your spine. You
start feeling the bumps only in Sport and Sport Plus and even then nothing
that’ll bother you too badly.
The Panamera D has a mechanical package
suited for long highway journeys, and an interior to match. You have eight-way
adjustable memory seats in front. The optional extras include a range of colors
for the material that you choose to rest your backside on. The dashboard design
is signature Porsche – it looks neat and classy and sporty all at once. The
center console houses buttons for individual climate control, ride height,
spoiler control and driving mode. The steering gets the regular audio controls,
and paddles on either side to upshift / downshift. Fit and finish and materials
used are typical German and it’ll take you years if you sit down to find fault.
The Panamera’s ride height control lets us
tackle the under-construction Jaipur-Delhi road and go over makeshift divider
crossings without hurting the underside.
The
Porsche’s are more like business class – big and comfortable, with individual
position and climate controls
If you think the Aston Martin Rapide’s rear
seats are spacious enough for grand tours, then the Porsche’s are more like
business class big and comfortable, with individual position and climate
controls. It also has extendable under-thigh support, ideal for long journeys.
And for a little extra, you can get front seat controls at the back, so you can
increase rear legroom if the front seat is vacant. The car you see here had a
rear-seat entertainment package that includes two screens, USB and aux inputs
and wireless headphones.
Of course, all that sportiness and the long
list of features don’t come cheap. The Panamera D that we tested is pegged at
$29,200 (ex-Maharashtra). If you look at it as a bhp-per-rupee ratio, it won’t
appeal to you. What you need to remember is that it offers a great
package whichever seat you take, front or rear.
Gone are the days when diesel engines were
crude and dirty and would leave you with a coughing fit if one of them drove
past. Today, they’re highly refined, clean enough to meet current emission norms
and sometimes grunty enough to match a petrol engine! Plus diesel is available
in the remotest corners of the country.
And the Panamera diesel is not slow or
sluggish by any standards – it’ll hit 100kph in 6.8seconds and a top speed of
242kph. And it still manages impressive consumption figures. Despite all the
pedal-to-the-metal highway driving and hours of wasting fuel waiting for jams to
clear up, the Panamera D ran 8.7km for every liter.
So here we are, at the president’s
doorstep, driving this car 1,500km after filling up the 100-litre tank only
twice. No other sports car would have managed that. And no, we didn’t do any
more damage to the ozone layer than an electric car would have generating
electricity damages the ozone layer anyway, right?
