Porsche Design Boss Agrees First-Gen Panamera 'Could Have Been Better'

You’d think that a company that’s built a car with ostensibly the same design for more than 70 years would be afraid of shaking things up. However, Porsche has never been one to shy away from trying new things and breaking ground, even design-wise. With the first-generation Porsche Panamera, it went way outside of its comfort zone to make a front-engine, four-door luxury sedan with a hatch. While the car itself was excellent, its design wasn’t as well received, and even Porsche’s chief designer Michael Mauer can admit that.

During an interview with 9Werks TV, Mauer talked about the future of the 911’s design, resisting fully autonomous driving, and his regrets about the original Panamera’s design. Mauer had a long career before joining Porsche in 2004, having previously penned cars for Mercedes, Saab, and even General Motors. However, only a few years into working for Porsche, Mauer was thrown into the fire to design one of the most radically unique cars the brand had ever made.

The first-generation Porsche Panamera in a few different incarnations, including the Mirage concept that led to its design at top right. *Porsche*

“The first really big project [I worked on] was the first generation of the Panamera,” Mauer said. It was an entirely new project, with no predecessor to draw inspiration from, in a segment Porsche had never been in before. “I can tell you, that was an interesting time.”

Some interesting choices were certainly made, too. Despite the Panamera’s inherently unprecedented nature, Porsche decided to graft the 911’s bubble-butt motif onto a car that was much longer than a 911 and required an entirely different roofline to fit adults in the back seat. While it’s impossible to say what Mauer’s original ideas were for solving those problems, he admits that not all of the eventual solutions were his own.

Mauer had to earn the trust of board members, who weren’t entirely comfortable trusting all of the new guy’s ideas. So compromises were made to keep the board happy. The initial sketches provided by Porsche show a sleeker, lower sedan, but that’s always the case before designers have to start fitting people, luggage space, and crash safety inside. Looking back, is Mauer happy with how the original Panamera turned out?

“I can see exactly what I was describing, that at some corners, I was not able to convince, in the end, the board members to do things in a different way,” he said. “There are some corners where I look at it and think ‘Ah, that could have been better.’”

I have a feeling we all know which corners those are. Mauer isn’t outright saying that the Panamera was ugly. However, coming from a German car executive, his comments are about as damning as you’re going to get.

The irony of the first-gen Panamera’s rather unfortunate looks is that they didn’t hurt the car one bit. Not only did it sell well enough to keep around, but it also launched Porsche into an entirely new segment that the brand is still in today, three generations of Panamera later, with one more on the way. Additionally, Porsche has another four-door sedan on the market, the all-electric Taycan, which likely wouldn’t exist without the success of the Panamera. So I think the slightly weird, frumpy looking first-gen Panamera deserves a little toast for opening the company up to a whole new market, even if its final design didn’t reflect the original vision of its designer.