Porsche Panamera (2016-2023) review

The Panamera has never been an affordable car, and now with no models in the yawning gap between £75,000 and £100,000, the entry-level cars look like nothing more than a tempter to get you in the showroom door. I doubt many owners will walk away having spent less than £100k, and if they have, they will not have got the best Panamera.

The base cars, powered by the twin-turbo V6, are the least impressive, the easiest to find an alternative to. The others all have their own selling points: the E-Hybrid is for urbanites, the GTS for the steely-eyed and the Turbo S for dominating autobahns. In fact, capable of 30mpg on a long haul and devouring B-roads, the Turbo S is the one-size fits all solution.

The updated hybrids are said to deploy their electricity more cleverly, for longer. The cells are more power dense than before, so what was a 14.1kWh battery now offers 17.9kWh, though due to improvements in battery chemistry it’s only 1.5kg heavier than the old cell pack. Not that any flavour of Panamera is what you'd call light, of course. We got 23-25 miles on e-range in our wintertime tests. That matches the average UK motorists' daily car use, and while Panamera drivers are likely to be among the higher mileage drivers, that's still an impressive string to an already versatile car's bow.

The trouble is it’ll be a very expensive one. On a six month down-payment and spread over four years, you’re looking at a bill of £2,000 a month. And that £135,610 asking price starts to look even more costly once you’ve added options and seen that you can have an RS6/M5/E63 for about 25 per cent less.