If This Porsche Panamera Prototype Is Anything To Go By, They're Playing It Safe
A pretty normal looking Porsche Panamera has been spotted testing. Interestingly enough, there's almost no camouflage, apart from a few stickers scattered about the bodywork. You can see most external parts of the car, clear as day.
If this Panamera is anything to go by, then it looks like Porsche isn't taking any chances with anything too wacky when it comes to a facelift or update through this generation of Panamera's life cycle. The changes are pretty minimal. Judging by the light placement on the front fascia and the high voltage sticker on the hood, it doesn't look like the base model Panamera is undergoing testing, but rather one of the higher performance variants, potentially a Turbo E-Hybrid.
Given the fact it's being tested on the Nürburgring, it's pretty likely whatever updates Porsche has planned for the Panamera relate to performance and drivetrain, rather than strict aesthetic updates. The Panamera has never been a model to shake it up too much in terms of styling, so sticking to performance upgrades is definitely within the lineup's character.
Not anything too wacky
Right now, the hottest Panamera you can buy is the Turbo S E-Hybrid, equipped with a 4.0-liter V8 that, with the help of an electric motor, makes 771 horsepower. It has a 0-60 time of 2.8 seconds, and a top speed of 202 mph. At time of writing, that's the absolute peak of the Panamera lineup, so anything up to and exceeding that performance benchmark would be quite welcome.
So we know that Porsche isn't taking a lot of chances with the styling, the exhaust pipes on the back make it clear that it has an engine, and it's likely a higher end variant of the Panamera. Those all sound like good things, but there's only so much information you can glean from a photo of the outside of a prototype.
As for what sort of updates Porsche is going to implement to the drivetrain and suspension, that's open for interpretation, as the sheet metal we are looking at doesn't betray much information about the inner workings of the German performance car.