The actual forerunner of the Porsche Panamera was the ... Chevrolet Corvair
In the 1950s, hardly anyone at Porsche would have thought of building a four-door car. But if they had, it would certainly have had a rear-mounted engine and would naturally have been air-cooled. And if they had been allowed to dream, then of course a six-cylinder boxer engine would have been installed in the rear, after all they were already working on the Porsche 901/911 at the time.
And in 1959, just such a car came onto the market, but it was not called a Porsche but a Chevrolet Corvair.
And the car was available from 1962, for the first time ever in a production vehicle, even with a turbocharger, more than 10 years before Porsche itself resorted to this technology for the 911.
And it would be another two decades before Porsche built the Panamera, a car that could in principle have been a late successor to the Porsche (Chevrolet Corvair). Of course, it no longer had the engine at the back, but at the front, and the six-cylinder boxer engine and air cooling were no longer appropriate, but even Porsche had to move with the times ...
