New 542bhp Porsche Panamera Turbo S

It’s Turbo S time for Porsche’s Panamera, with the luxury four-door cruise missile receiving its final tune-up from the Porsche engineers, sitting her squarely at the top of the Panamera price- and performance-range, at £122,623 and 542bhp.

So, what extras do you get for £20k on top of your ‘standard’ Panamera Turbo price tag? Titanium turbos, more power, more pace, and a fresh set of 20-inch Turbo II, double-five-spoke alloys for starters.

Let’s deal with that potent forced induction power and performance first. The twin-turbos; one for each bank of four cylinders, have been upgraded with titanium-aluminium blades for both the compressor and turbine wheels.

This light and tough combination cuts initial inertia so the compressor blades get spinning sooner as that hot exhaust gas hits hard and fast. And the quicker, harder and faster the turbo gets spinning, the better the throttle response and less energy (and ultimately fuel) needed to make power.

And big power needs big turbos which are usually associated with turbo lag - the pause in performance while the turbo gathers pace – but the boffins at Porsche have fine-tuned this balance of lag over performance, and look to have come up trumps. 

The engine control unit (ECU) has been tweaked to work best with the new turbos, and with every ECU tweak, the economy-engineers will be looking to save fuel wherever possible in the combustion process. 

Now the 4.8-litre, twin-turbo motor makes a chunky 542bhp; the Panamera Turbo makes 493bhp, and torque is also up to 590lb ft (during ‘overboost’ in Sport and Sport Plus modes) over the Turbo’s 510lb ft. In-gear, torque-laden acceleration should be seriously impressive.

These big, Turbo S engine output figures should add up to rival-slaying speed out on the road, where the king Panamera will make more grunt than the luxury hyper-cruisers from BMW (760Li at 537bhp), and even the mighty Mercedes AMG (S63 AMG with 518bhp). Prepare for the battle of the autobahn sledgehammers. 

So, with 542bhp of new Panamera Turbo S power, the 0-62mph sprint – in Launch Control - is delivered in just 3.8secs – a whole four tenths quicker than the Turbo, and seriously sniffing around supercar speeds - but with a boot full of luggage and three friends along for the ride.
And at 191mph the Turbo S just nudges past the Turbo’s 188mph top speed. 

Quicker all-round than the Turbo then, but those new space age turbos and reprogrammed ECU means that the S actually matches its little brother on economy, at 24.6mpg on a combined cycle. It looks like recent manufacturers’ focus on turbocharger technology is paying off.

All of this power and torque would be distinctly wild-riding without Porsche’s trademark electronics and chassis systems, and probably most important of all are the Porsche Dynamic Chassis Control (PDCC): their active roll stabilisation system, the Porsche Torque Vectoring Plus (PTV Plus) system that applies a variable torque split to the rear wheels and which collaborates with an electronically controlled limited slip differential. You might’ve heard of E-diffs in Formula One. 

The 20-grand on top Panamera Turbo S will certainly dress to impress, courtesy of new 20-inch Turbo II alloy wheels with increased rear axle track width, side skirts from the Porsche Exclusive range and an adaptive extending four-way, colour-coded rear spoiler, all happily fitted as standard on the S. You can, of course, expect acres of leather inside that four-friends-friendly cabin. 

Top it all off with a free-flowing, rip-roaring sports exhaust and you’ve got one loud and proud, £122,623, four-seater ballistic weapon. And you only have to wait until the June on sale date to claim the fastest set of golf clubs in the World.

















By Daniel Anslow

Follow us @totallymotor