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2017 Porsche Panamera Turbo First Drive

The Porsche Panamera didn't need much improving. Okay, the humpback design was short of pretty, and people really liked complaining about the Spine of Many Buttons down the center console. But once you sat down in one (and could no longer see the shape) then set the chassis how you wanted it, the nitpicking stopped. Now back for round two, the Panamera has been visited with improvement in almost every area. We'll start with the styling. The 2017 design doesn't stray too far from the original's, but a handful of small changes come together to execute the stretched-911 look the car has always been going for – the rear roofline and side glass opening now mirror the sports car's. The back seat is no longer designed to fit a certain six-foot-six CEO, so the roof has been dropped slightly, although Porsche claims the seat cushion has been lowered by the same amount, making for a net-zero headroom change. The 2017 car's more pronounced shoulders, rear glass that reaches back farther, and a greater taper toward the rear bring it all together. There was less change in front – it's hard to tell a difference between the parts ahead of the windshield on this car and the face-lifted first generation at a glance; that's fine by us. If you liked the first Panamera's design, you'll like this one. And if you didn't, well, you probably still will. And anyone who liked how the last one drove will be into the second-gen car. The original felt tight, composed, and amazingly Porsche-like, more so than the Cayenne SUV that busted out of the company's mold before it. Porsche used its usual combination of technology and deft chassis tuning to make the first Panamera something more than a sporty sedan with a hatch on the back, and all of that carries over to this new one; the car is about the same size, with a slightly longer wheelbase, but it feels even smaller around you, which is mostly down to the many sophisticated chassis systems. They're too numerous to even list here, but you can read our tech backgrounder story for more details on what makes the car tick. We'll focus instead on how it drives. Although it has been changed, the steering manages to extend a through line from the last Panamera. The rack switches from hydraulic to electric assist, but the weight and feedback are similar to what the old car provided, at least in Normal mode.

eGarage video features Helmuth Bott's personal Porsche 959 prototype

"We thought we were going to build a super-911," said Peter Schutz, former CEO of Porsche AG of the development of the Porsche 959. That was before it started getting expensive. At that point, Helmuth Bott, Porsche R&D director got frightened. Costs ballooned because of the all-wheel drive, sequential turbocharging and other technology Porsche had never even thought about when it set out to build a 911 to compete in Group B. Schutz continued, "The amount of resources we were committing got totally out of hand." Instead of pulling the plug, Bott doubled down and drew on the strength of his brilliant team to build a car whose impact is still echoing aross the industry.
"It's probably one of our most prized possessions" says Don Leatherwood, Director of the Brumos collection where Dr. Bott's personal prototype resides, and where Frazer Spowart went to see the car and create a video for eGarage. Check out the sights and sounds of the 959 before it was the 959, and get personal takes on the car from Hurley Haywood, Peter Schutz and Don Leatherwood. Keep reading to see the video.

Stunning vintage Porsche 911 collection profiled by eGarage

It's Pebble Beach time, so how appropriate that eGarage presents us a vid on one of the finest personal Porsche collections in the world. A former COO of drug maker GlaxoSmithKline, Robert Ingram amassed more then 50 Porsches that include a 1949 356 Gmund, a 1961 356B 1600 Carrera GTL Abarth Coupe, and a 1964 356C Carrera 2 Coupe. His collecting career didn't start well, Ingram saying he bought his first Porsche in 1959 sight unseen and it was a fiasco, the seller had lied about everything. Ingram said he still has the car, unrestored, and uses it to show people "what happens when you don't do your due diligence." Things have got much better. Ingram said he's committed to using his cars during his lifetime, so he called some friends for a weekend in Napa Valley to drive selections like his 1968 911L Rally Kit/Sport Kit II, a 1973 911 Carrera RS 2.7, a 1974 911 RS 3.0, and the first 1990 911 Carrera 4 Lightweight. As far as we can tell, they did not drive the Porsche tractor also in the collection. The collection is covered in a new book called Porsche Unexpected by veteran car writer Randy Leffingwell, with photography by Michael Furman, and it also examines the skill of collecting, with tips and mistakes shared by Ingram and other collectors. You can check out some of the cars and words from the party involved in the video above. News Source: eGarage via YouTube Porsche Coupe Luxury Performance Classics Videos egarage