Porsche's Panamera meets its daddy(s)

That number is the giveaway of course. This is no Porsche Panamera; this is the Panamera’s daddy. It’s the 1990 four-door prototype – the original “Lear jet for the street” as then-Porsche boss Ulrich Bez described it, and next to it the very first proper four seat concept they created, the 915. The former was all set to go into production in 1994 but was axed in ’92, officially because sales were down – and unofficially because Ferry Porsche didn’t care for it.

So much so it was said that the one and only prototype had been destroyed. The “four-door Porsche” remained Stuttgart’s dirty little secret, even after the 2009 launch of the first-gen Panamera, the 989’s spiritual successor if hardly its design apogee. Then in 2014, by now with the idea of a four-door Porsche sedan accepted far and wide, the Porsche Museum came clean and showed the “destroyed” prototype as part of its Project Top Secret exhibition.

And hey presto here it is again at Goodwood for Revival – the first time it has been outside Germany. And with work to do, too: reminding people that a four-door Porsche can indeed look as perky as a sports car, something the new Panamera is far more successful at than the tubby-looking original.

We didn’t need to see 989 and 2017 Panamera side by side to know that. Actually we couldn’t even if we had wanted to; while the 989 was on full public show, its successor was behind a partition next to it. Which allowed Porsche’s guests to see the new car close up for the first time in the UK, following its disguised debut at the Festival of Speed this year, driven by Patrick Dempsey.

Up close this latterday “Lear jet for the street” is a formidable thing, and so much better looking than the car it replaces. There’s not much more to report since we wrote about it in the summer – you can see our story here  - apart from a UK on-sale date of November 4^th and the confirmation of the Panamera 4 E-Hybrid, which at £80k becomes the entry-level model.

Using technology from the 918 Spyder, its figures make impressive reading: 462hp, 516 lb ft of torque, 0-62mph in 4.6 seconds, 172mph, a zero emissions electric range of 30 miles at speeds up to 86mph, and 112mpg with 56g/km of CO2 (the latter figures more for officialdom than the real world of course).

There was no hybrid 989, but in its own way it was just as radical. Despite those beautifully balanced Harm Laagay lines, this “911” had no truck with air-cooled rear engines; the 989 took a leaf from the 928’s book with its 3.6-litre water-cooled V8 mounted up front. With PDK ‘box the V8’s 314hp provided 0-62 in 5.8 second s and a top speed of 167mph – and yes there was definitely room in the back for adult legs, as one look into the car on display at Revival showed.

That’s the 989 then, and it was great to see it in the flesh at Goodwood. Yesterday it was Porsche’s little secret, now it is one of the most significant prototypes the company has ever made, with Porsche four-doors (sedans and SUVs) far outstripping sales of sports cars.

Photography by Amy Shore.