Here's Why a Used Porsche Panamera Is a Sub-$30,000 Bargain

this is a 2012 Porsche Panamera and it's cheap really cheap under $30,000 cheap and there's nothing wrong with it it's not ultra high miles it's not damaged it's just that the Panamera has gone from a car that only the coolest ultra rich people can afford to something that you can now buy used for less than the price of a Camry and today I'm going to review this Panamera to find out if you should I've borrowed this Panamera from ciency motors which is an exotic car dealership here in Southern California that has an amazing inventory of incredible cars from muscle cars and classics to multi-million dollar exotics they have one of the best showrooms of any dealerships on earth and you can check him out by clicking the link in the description below so let's talk Panamera the Panamera first came out for the 2010 model year 10 years ago hard to believe the original Panamera models were S versions with a 400 horsepower v8 there was also a 500 horsepower turbo v8 the next year Porsche added a 300 horsepower v6 to the model range like this car and those early Panamera v6 models are typically the cheapest ones on the used market today but don't be fooled by the fact that this is the base model entry-level Panamera this car still does 0 to 60 in 5.6 seconds which is pretty good for a full-size luxury sedan and it also looks fairly modern since Porsche hasn't really changed the Panamera all that much over the years plus this car still drives like a Porsche and it has a surprising amount of luxury features especially for under 30 grand so today I'm going to take you on a tour of an early Panamera v6 and I'm going to show you all of the interesting quirks and features of what's probably one of the best porsche bargains on the market today then i'm gonna get it out on the road and drive it and then i'm going to give it a dug score alright I'm gonna start the quicksand features of the Panamera in the interior and the first thing you notice when you climb into this interior is that it's pretty nice even though this car is almost 10 years old and starting to get cheap it has the more modern look Porsche interior in fact this was the first car to debut sort of the latest layout of Porsche interior when the Panamera first came out and the result is the interior still looks modern refreshed up-to-date even compared to new Porsche models that are almost 10 years newer than this car unfortunately this particular Panamera has a bit of an elderly person interior color situation going on you have a beige interior which is falling out of favor very quickly in the luxury car world it's mixed with this light wood on the steering wheel and in the dashboard and in the center console and you also have this ruffled leather seating designed to be more comfortable and look more like old-school leather most Porsche models didn't have it you had to specify it and the person who originally bought this Panamera did but despite the relatively modern interior in this car there are some interesting quirks worth noting I'm gonna start with one thing that has always bothered me about Porsche models from this era and that would be the steering wheel now this inter you have leather everywhere wood aluminum everything looks very nice top quality materials then you get to the steering wheel center and it's this cheap beige plastic it's such an odd place to cheap out the centre of the steering wheel that you're looking at all the time but that's where Porsche decided to go cheap I find that to be such a strange decision it just doesn't really look all that nice and it's like the only bad material in this entire interior but it's right in your line of sight and next up another interesting quirk up here between the two front seats you have one cup holder so you the driver and your passenger can argue over who gets to use the cup holder but in case this turns into a serious argument good news there are more cupholders they're just hidden they're over on the passenger side of the dashboard you push down this little silver panel and you can pop out two more cup holders and that way the passenger gets two cupholders but the driver gets the one premier Center cup holder next up something else I absolutely love in this interiors over to the left of the steering wheel there's a little sticker that has a speed limit on it you may be wondering what is this about well this car has all season tires and with the all season tires that Porsche put on from the factory they weren't rated to go more than 150 miles an hour now this isn't a problem for most German automakers because they limit their cars to around 150 miles an hour electronically but Porsche doesn't believe in electronic speed limiters so this car could go more than 150 but the tires weren't intended to and Porsche solved that problem by putting a little decal next to the ignition switch in order to remind you not to exceed 150 because your tires could have a problem that's an interesting way of solving what could be a rather catastrophic safety issue and next up something I've always liked in this inter if you look on the door sill you can see there's an armrest just like on basically all door sills but the interesting thing here is if you open the door the armrest continues for like 2 inches onto the b-pillar it's just a little space in there for more armrest ability now obviously Porsche didn't have to do that they could have just ended the armrest on the door panel which would have been cheaper and easier but they did because that's what you do in a luxury sedan when you're committed to attention to detail it's a pretty good touch and next up moving on to the center of this interior you can see it has this giant center console full of buttons just like the latest Porsche models do although they're evolving a bit from this but this was the latest and greatest Porsche had in 2010 the problem I've always had with this center console with all the buttons is that if you don't get a lot of options you do get a lot of blank switches buttons that would have gone on there if you had a more expensive car and this car is great proof of that you can see there are four blanks on the driver's side and four more blanks on the passenger side and every time you get in you're basically reminded that you skipped a lot of the other options that would have filled out your Center control step now automakers who integrate all of their features into their infotainment system don't really have this blank button problem but Porsche at this time was committed to making buttons for basically everything and that meant if you didn't get everything you've had some blanks now next up another important notable item in the center console you can see the shift lever this car has Porsches PDK dual-clutch automatic transmission that transmission came out for the 2009 model year the Panamera first came out in 2010 so it was one of the very first cars to use PDK now PDK is excellent it's very robust very reliable and it shifts very quickly and I'll talk a little bit more about it when I drive this car in a little bit and finally our last interesting item up front here is the center screen now this center screen is almost ten years old but you can see it is surprisingly responsive you tap it and it does stuff almost immediately it's not large like modern screens and you can't move around the map with just a swipe of the finger very easily there's no pinch to zoom that kind of thing but it is a relatively responsive screen not anywhere near as frustrating is like mid 2000s cars where you try to change the radio and it beeps and it weights like eight seconds this thing is way way better than that despite its age and that's a pretty good thing when you're buying a heavily depreciated used luxury car you don't have to compromise quite as much as you might think on infotainment technology and next up we move on to the back seats in the original Panamera which in my opinion is more interesting than the front seats in part due to the sides now I'm six foot three six foot four and as you can see I fit in here just fine my head has a couple of inches before it hits the ceiling my knees fit behind the front seat perfectly fine fit back here which is unusual in a car like this and that's because while the Panamera was being developed the CEO of Porsche was a tall man by the name of Vendela Nevada King and during the development he issued an edict that this car had to be able to seat him comfortably in the back and that's why there's so much Headroom and legroom in the back of the Panamera but if this caused a problem you see Porsche always wanted the Panamera to look like a coupe because entering the sedan world was kind of a big move for Porsche and they wanted to tie it in to the look of its well known coupe models like the 911 but it'd be hard to make a coupe fit tall people in the back and so it's because of this tall person edict that the original Panamera kinda looked weird because they had to keep the tall roofline all the way through the rear seats and then they had to taper it off very quickly behind the rear seats to make it look like a coupe and that's what contributed to the Panamera's kind of strange styling in its first few model years nobody really loved how that looked but that's the reason why Porsche wanted to be able to seat four adults in this car comfortably and it came at the expense of its appearance now another interesting thing in the back seat of the Panamera is that the back seats are bucket seats you don't have a 3-person bench back here instead you have two individual seats meaning that the Panamera was a four seater now this is no longer the case the Panamera is now offered with a middle seat if you want one but in the early models you could only get it this way with two seats in the front and two seats in the back so of course you might be wondering what exactly takes the place of the middle seat since it isn't here and the answer is well you have this nice strip of wood trim which looks good at the very front of this trim you can push this little lid and reveal a cup holder or further back you can open up this storage compartment and you have another cup holder and a little more storage and a power outlet I think particularly special in all this stuff of course you can also drop the center armrest between the seats if you want extra comfort and then you can open it up for extra storage but generally the answer is Porsche didn't really do all that much cool stuff with the extra space they had in the back instead they wanted to make it a four seater I think to emphasize that wasn't intended to be some boring family car but rather a high-performance touring car that just happened to have four doors and next up another notable item back here is the screens these are not aftermarket screens this was a very rare option called the Porsche rear seat entertainment system you can see the Porsche logo when you turn on these screens this screen back here allowed you to select music USB auxiliary or a CD if you wanted and there was also something called cross link that was some kind of TV tuner that you had to have some extra stuff installed to make it work but you can see there's a USB port and an aux port below the screens that you can plug into and then you can listen to your desired music in the back but of course Porsche wouldn't sell this car with just rear screens and then you had to go buy your own headphones actually that does sound like something Porsche would do but not in this case the headphones are hidden in a little cubby behind the rear seat headrests you reach back there and you can pull out the headphones you can see they are wireless headphones and they say Porsche on them which makes them extra cool these aren't just stupid boring headphones you have Porsche branded ones and next up we move around to the back of the Panamera and on to the trunk which is actually a hatchback which is something I've always found kind of interesting distinctive from all the other luxury sedans and when you open it up you can see it really is a cargo area and not a trunk it's open to the passenger compartment and the rear seats fold down meaning you can get a really large cargo area in here if you need to carry larger items in your Porsche luxury sedan the result of that is that the Panamera is almost as practical as a true station wagon just a little bit less practical thanks to its sloping rear design but otherwise you have the cargo capacity of a wagon back here and I've always felt it's kind of a weird thing it's almost like Porsche snuck a station wagon into the full-size luxury sedan market without anybody ever really noticing but that's pretty much exactly what this is it's also worth noting that with the cargo hatch closed you can see this cars sloped back design which was a big point of controversy when it first came out but it kind of started a trend this was one of the very first sloped back design cars along with the Honda Accord Crosstour back in 2010 and a lot more cars adopted this design language later and this is a trend that still continues today although most of the modern sloped back cars are better looking than the original Panamera and finally one other item worth noting back here is the spoiler the spoiler is currently in the up position but you can press a little button in the center control stack and that will lower the spoiler in case you want to go in stealth mode but press the button again the spoiler goes back up and you'll get just a little bit more attention which is probably what you're looking for if you spend less than 30 grand on a used Panamera and finally we move under the hood in the Panamera into the engine bay and the very first thing that strikes you here is just how much empty space there is under the hood obviously that's because this is a v6 model there were Panamera's sold with larger v8 engines that would have taken up more space under here and you can really tell that you cheap tout this is the engine bay equivalent to those blank switches in the interior by the way one other interesting piece of information about the Panamera is Porsche enthusiasts and car enthusiasts know Porsche has three-digit model codes that distinguish all of the different models and generations like the 993 the 996 the nine nine one etc this era of the Panamera was called v9 7-0 the 970 not as well-known but you can see in this little label on the hood it says 970 at the front that was the internal Porsche model designation for the original Panamera and finally since I'm out here I want to talk styling now I have never loved the look of the original Panamera mainly for the reason I mentioned the roofline just goes too far and flat and then it curves down so quickly it always looked weird and awkward trying to turn a sedan into a coupe but I have to say that in my opinion they never really improved it dramatically the newer Panamera models do look nicer but it's not like they've made it into a truly beautiful car it's generally the same look except for a few things modernised here and there and a slightly new treatment on that roofline truthfully this car looks to most people like a brand new Panamera and if you buy one of these for 30 grand or less you will get many people asking you where your newfound wealth came from because it looks so similar and my view is if you're looking to impress people and you're trying to stretch to afford a newer Panamera don't no one can tell the difference you will impress people with this one just as much it doesn't look great but then again none of the Panamera's really do and so those are the quirks and features of the original porsche panamera now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives all right driving the original Panamera six-cylinder I've got a lot of experience driving these I spent a lot of time in Panamera models I've always been impressed by the six-cylinder it's not a particularly fast car it's not really that exciting but it's fast enough you know the turbo will just totally knock your socks off but this one is more than fine at everyday commuting in Florida not fast but quick enough definitely gets up to the speed of traffic reasonably quickly and one of the big benefits is this car would feel slow if it wasn't for the PDK dual-clutch automatic transmission really goes a long way to making this car feel quick and fast enough and actually enjoyable so in terms of acceleration I think this car is totally reasonable yes it makes more sense you want an S you want a turbo to get more performance but these are the cheaper ones and so if you want a Panamera this is a good place to go now as for the handling to thoughts here pro and con the pro is that this car truly handles like a Porsche I've driven a bunch of these always impressed by how flat they feel in corners how balanced the steering feels it is a step above the 7 Series the s-class that sort of thing I remember when the original Cayenne came out Porsche promised the kind would make the x5 feel like a truck and it didn't but the Panamera does make the s-class and the 7 Series feel like the big cars they are this car feels way way more nimble than you think when you're going around corners the drawback is it is a big car so even though Porsche is able to neutralize the size when you're going around corners and curvy roads they can't do anything about the cars physical size limitations in like a big city where you're in tight spaces tight parking spots and that was always some event and me about the Panamera it's just big it basically has the footprint of a Range Rover it's a large vehicle and so even though you're going around corners it's nimble you can forget the size when you're trying to squeeze into a tight parking space you don't forget the size now at a stop like this car feels very nice very luxurious I will say it does not have the same comfort feel of an s-class so if you're looking for a car that is very coddling and very luxurious and very quiet and soft this is most of those things but it's just not on the level of an s-class or a 7 Series ultimately this is a great car and the fact that this is under 30 grand is just amazing and that's especially amazing because I get in this car and I'm touching the buttons I'm feeling everything everything that still feels is tight and is well put together and as well-designed as it did 10 years ago when this came out the turn signal stock still feels take the steering still feels good suspension all the buttons work the switches the car is just well made and I think this is a fairly reliable part if I was gonna consider a 10 year old luxury sedan I would be worried about Mercedes and BMW before I was worried about Porsche in terms of ownership costs for the price point it is an unbeatable car especially if you just want people to look at you and think that you have a lot of money there's a lot of people out there or in that world and this is absolutely I would say this is the number one car for that at this price point and so that's the original Porsche Panamera v6 this car isn't perfect it's not as nicer as modern looking as the latest Panamera but it's not that far off it doesn't have the same luxury equipment as a new Panamera but again it's relatively close and it's not as fast as a v8 or a turbo model but it isn't exactly slow but the real benefit is the price there is probably no car on earth where you could spend less than $30,000 and look as rich as you could if you got a used Panamera and now it's time to give this one a dug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the Panamera from this era looks well not great and it gets a 4 out of 10 acceleration to zero to 60 in the low five-second range they gets a 5 out of 10 handling is shockingly sharp given the cars size and it gets a 6 out of 10 fun factor is okay it's reasonably quick and sporty but it's still a v6 big sedan and it gets a 5 out of 10 cool factor is fairly strong cooler than other big sedans from this era and it gets a 6 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 26 out of 50 next up are the daily categories and features the Panamera is reasonably well equipped than it earns a 6 out of 10 Comfort is good but not as good as rival luxury sedans and it gets a 7 out of 10 quality is truly excellent these are reliable and well built and it gets an 8 out of 10 practicality is normal for a luxury sedan it's larger cargo area is a benefit but four seats is a drawback so it bounces out for a 5 out of 10 finally value and this is a seriously good one it's amazing how much performance and luxury and status this car offers for under 30 grand and it gets an 8 out of 10 for a total daily score of 34 out of 50 add it up in the dug score is 60 out of 100 which places it here against other luxury cars from this era and a few relevant Porsches the early Panamera really is a bargain if you can get past the styling and I highly recommend it if you want a family car but you don't want to settle for the same normal boring stuff [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 2,529,402

Rating: 4.8546014 out of 5

Keywords: porsche panamera, panamera review, bargain porsche, cheap porsche, panamera, porsche panamera review, used panamera, old porsche panamera, doug demuro, demuro, doug de muro

Id: EAezax2ugQU

Length: 22min 10sec (1330 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/irridisregardless]

CNC has way more cars for sale under $30k than I expected.

edit: https://www.cncexotics.com/details-1987-mercury-grand_marquis-ls-used-2mebm75f6hx656699.html

[u/agod2486]

I got to test drive one of these recently and I was really impressed. My local Dodge dealer of all places had a 4s and I happened to see it while testing out the Charger. Really really impressive car, and for around 40k, I thought it was a bargain. I wasn't a fan of the weird thumb shifters and the styling was about as bad as expected but otherwise, it was a really nice place to be and was great to drive.

I disagree with Doug on his styling comment though. The refreshed Panamera looks MUCH better than the older one with its weird humpback. The slope is a lot more gradual, and IMO it looks much more like a stretched out 911. Non-car people might not notice, but if I owned one, I would probably have to avoid the rear-angle view every time I got into it.

I heavily considered this as a potential daily driver but the repair costs scared me away. Roughly every 40k miles/4 years requires a major service, with a minor service every 15k miles/2 years. Any issue with the PDK would destroy my wallet. I think living with a car like this on a daily basis would have caused me to worry too much about something going wrong. But for someone who would be willing to take that risk or could afford it, it's such a great used bargain.

[u/MogwaiInjustice]

Under $30K?! Holy shit, I might need to get me a Porsche as part of being a responsible adult with a kid.

[u/Generic09]

TIL that I have an old persons taste regarding interior colors...

[u/Badkill123]

This car is actually quite common in Europe with the 3.0tdi VAG engine. It also uses a lot of VAG parts in the suspension and electronics. So servicing this car isn't as expensive as it might seem due to the wide part availability especially with the 3.0 diesel.

[u/[deleted]]

These are just like the 10 year old Maseratis in that they give off the vibe so badly of someone who wants to look like they have money. There are so many cheap Porsches parked in apartment complexes in Atlanta that they’re a meme here.

[u/pryan886]

Best way to look rich for under $30k? It’s literally next to a Bentley Arnage T in the DougScore table at the end.

I’d much rather have the Porsche, but an old Bentley is the like poster child for both “old money” and “not quite enough new money”.

[u/quinnsterr]

Oh boy dougs about to financially ruin a number of enthusiasts.

[u/[deleted]]

I used to think first gen Panameras were hideous. Now they don’t look too bad. But The 2nd gen fixes a lot of the styling issues the first gen had.

That being said, how’s the reliability on first gen Panameras?