There Is One Way to Get a New Manual Porsche Panamera

Dreaming of a unique Porsche, but it’s not currently in the lineup? I’ve got news for you. With the right budget and a healthy dose of patience, the folks at Stuttgart will turn just about any dream into reality—even if it’s something as peculiar as a Porsche Panamera with a manual transmission.

The Drive‘s Kyle Cheromcha caught up with Alexander Fabig of Porsche’s Sonderwunsch program during Monterey Car Week, where the German automaker revealed its latest custom creation, the Flachbau RS, or 911 Slantnose, which was commissioned by a secret European customer who dropped many millions and waited three years for their one-off creation.

Flachbau RS. Porsche

Fabig also discussed some of the past, present, and future projects of the special-request team. But most importantly, he shared how far the Porsche is willing to go to please its most demanding clients, and whether there are any limitations that might force it to say no. In a nutshell: Porsche will go very far, and rejections would mostly stem from regulatory or safety-related issues.

The Drive: You left the powertrain alone in the Slantnose at the customer’s request. Are crazy engine swaps or transmission swaps something that could be on the table if someone wanted that?

Alexander Fabig: Yes. Especially when talking about celebrating the manual side of life. These are projects that are in the making at the moment, where we look at these things. Again, the majority of customers are not so much into [pure] horsepower.

So if someone wanted a manual Panamera, for example, that is something that you guys could look at.

Yes, yes, yes. That’s very good; I will use this as an example from now on [when people ask about the program].

There was talk a couple of years ago of a Panamera convertible Porsche was working on. What happened to that?

I often used it as an example when asked what were the limits, what we wouldn’t do, or what was possible. And for some time I used the example that we would build a Panamera Cabrio. If you are asking for it, we would do it, but we are not working on that. It’s not an active project.

If you think about Sonderwunsch, it’s all about being part of Porsche and being the creator of your own car. And therefore the body style and design elements of the project are much more, let’s say, tangible for the customer than the sheer horsepower underneath. Because with the horsepower, of course, they can say, “I want to have 110 horsepower more.” And we try to achieve that, but there is no real creativity from the customer involved. But discussing the forum, discussing what we do with the interior, how do we position the car? That’s where the customer can really bring his own creative ideas in.

Regulatory issues are always the limit, and of course, it depends on whether the customer wants to have a road-legal car or not. So we are also working on topics that won’t be street legal in the end, but that’s defined by the customer himself. If you’re happy enough to have your own country, then maybe you don’t need a license plate.