Porsche Sport Turismo Is Dead Because Americans Don’t Buy Wagons
The only Porsche wagon left is the Taycan Sport Turismo.
Porsche just launched the third generation of its Panamera sedan and it gains a suite of meaningful updates over the outgoing model. However, there's also one glaring omission to the third-gen Panamera's order sheet—a wagon version. According to Automotive News Europe, the Porsche Panamera Sport Turismo is sadly dead for the third generation.
Porsche added the Sport Turismo body style to its second-generation Panamera lineup for the 2017 model year, which elated the Porsche enthusiast community. The Panamera Sport Turismo was the family-car Porsche for real car nerds like you and I but there was apparently one problem with it: no one bought it.
"Porsche focuses its product portfolio primarily on the wishes of its customers. Around the world, the Panamera is primarily in demand as a sports saloon. In China and the U.S., our main markets in the D segment, in particular, the Sport Turismo plays only a minor role. For this reason, we have decided to discontinue this model variant with the launch of the new generation," Porsche told The Drive.
We can't know for sure just how well the Sport Turismo model sold relative to the Panamera sedan since Porsche combines their sales figures. But there's no reason to doubt Porsche's claims of poor sales. Car enthusiasts in the U.S. regularly complain about the lack of sporty wagons on sale but when car companies finally build them, few customers seem to buy them. There are exceptions, of course, like the Audi RS6 Avant and Mercedes-AMG E63 Wagon, but they aren't the rule. Proof of that is in the lack of performance wagons on sale in North America. Europe gets cars like the Audi RS4 Avant, BMW M3 Touring, Mercedes-AMG C63 wagon, and the Volkswagen Golf R Wagon, none of which are sold in the U.S. It seems the Venn diagram overlap between car enthusiasts that want fast wagons and customers who can afford them is quite small.
There's still some hope for Porsche wagon enthusiasts, as long as they're cool with electric vehicles. For the moment, both the electric Taycan Sport Turismo and the slightly more rugged Taycan Cross Turismo are still on sale. That doesn't mean we won't miss the Panamera Sport Turismo, though, as it was a unique car in a mostly homogenized automotive market. I'll be keeping my eyes out for used models over the next few years.
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