Tested: 2025 Porsche Panamera GTS Is a Family Car That Thinks It’s a Sports Car

The GTS is a looker and a goer, but a stiff ride is at odds with its mission as a family car.

It’s hard to be a middle child, especially in the Porsche family. The older siblings, such as the 911, 718, and Cayenne, have clear-cut tasks. They’re athletic and racy, or in the latter’s case mature—focused on the family. The younger ones, Macan and Taycan, are bold and experimental, trying new things, unburdened by legacy. Then there’s Panamera, neither an SUV nor a sports coupe, charming but awkward, clever but hard to pin down. As the Panamera approaches college age, you know it’s going to have trouble picking a major. Is it a physicist? A psychologist? A jock?

For 2025, the Panamera tries out a variety of subjects, with several revised hybrids including the Turbo S E-Hybrid, which is aiming for valedictorian, and the internal-combustion-only Panamera GTS, which is going straight for the gymnasium—maybe with a minor in music. It has a hearty set of lungs singing that twin-turbo V-8 fight song.

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HIGHS: Still a head-turner, an athlete in the twisties, sounds like a rock band.

We’ll start there, because the GTS gets as straight as an arrow when it comes to its powerplant. Beneath the Panamera’s appealing froggy face—made even more amphibian by our test car’s optional Oak Green Metallic Neo paint ($2980)—is the 4.0-liter V-8 from the latest Panamera Turbo E-Hybrid with two single-scroll turbochargers rather than twin-scroll snails of the previous version and with higher combustion chamber pressure, both changes we believe were done for emissions reasons. On the performance side, the updated V-8 now corrals 20 more horses than it did in the 2023 GTS for a total of 493 horsepower and 486 pound-feet of torque. Porsche says it gains 2 mph at the top end, with a promised top speed of 188 mph on summer tires, and drops a tenth of a second in the 60-mph sprint. We confirmed the latter with a 3.1-second run to 60 mph at the test track. The eight-speed dual-clutch transmission snaps off shifts without hesitation, and the 2025 GTS has no trouble making objects in the rearview mirror disappear in a hurry. A quarter-mile disappears beneath its wide rear tires in 11.7 seconds at 116 mph. It does so with fanfare too, the sport exhaust system amplifying the V-8’s trumpet blasts and bass-drum cracks through four dark bronze exhaust tips.

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The GTS gets several visual identifiers to set it apart from the hybrid and base models. Blacked-out details on the nose, headlights, body trim, and badging give it a chic exterior. Red brake calipers (six-piston front and four-piston rear) behind the 21-inch Anthracite Grey Turbo S center-lock wheels perform the same function as the bottom of a Louboutin heel in terms of flash, clamping down on cross-drilled iron rotors to bring the Panamera to a quick 154-foot halt from 70 mph, and taking 303 feet to do it from 100 mph. Porsche offers carbon-ceramic rotors for an extra $8960.

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Open the door and drop inside—and it is a drop, as the GTS doesn’t get any the hybrid’s available Active Ride dampers to raise and lower the machine for ease of entry—and you’re encased in Porsche’s 18-way adjustable adaptive sport seats (standard here) with a choice of two optional GTS-specific interior colorways, a bright Carmine Red or the soft mousey Slate Grey Neo (either is $5240), the latter lining our test car’s console, armrests, headliner, and steering wheel. Porsche subscribes to the minimalism-as-luxury theory, so don’t expect quilting and inlays or filigreed speaker vents and knurled controls. The GTS’s biggest splurges are a Bose sound system, the Sport Chrono stopwatch on the dash, and a push-to-pass button on the steering wheel. We find the Panamera interior attractive and roomy but feel it could use a bit more padding everywhere from the seats to the steering wheel. The helm’s narrow circumference is a pleasure, but it feels bony under its faux suede, like it needs to eat more; and after a long drive, the seats will make you aware of your own bony elements.

More on the Panamera

• 2024 Porsche Panamera Softens but Stays Focused
• 2025 Porsche Panamera Adds V-6 E-Hybrid Models
• 2025 Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid Is Bonkers

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Here come the complications with Panamera GTS’s focus on athleticism. It’s intended to be the most driver-connected variant. It’s not as fast as the top hybrids, but it’s more pure, prioritizing handling, which gives it the ability to circle a skidpad pulling 0.96 g. It uses the same aluminum control-arm front and multilink rear suspension as all the Panameras, but it’s lower than the base car by 0.4 inch and has stiffer anti-roll bars. Ours added in the optional rear-axle steering ($1350), and around corners it helped the GTS hold its line like a smaller car. The standard two-valve air springs with Porsche’s Active Suspension Management stiffens everything up in the sportier modes. Porsche claims these upgrades come without a hit to ride comfort, but here we disagree.

LOWS: Not the quickest Panamera available, minimal interior padding, rides like a rock.

As fans of the fast and rowdy, we’re awfully forgiving of an uncomfortable ride. Our hangup with the Panamera GTS comes when we look at its use case. Introduced as a pretty four-door to supplement a 911 owner’s family garage, it then upped its sporty quotient to earn its Porsche crest, sometimes to the point of defeating its original purpose. Driving the 2025 Panamera GTS is dreamy, but riding in it is less so. It’s rough waters in the back seat, where you feel and hear every tire thud and pavement crack. Even in the front, and in the least firm settings, the GTS’s tires hum and it sends reports on road quality by direct mail to your lower back, signature required.

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We’d never complain about that in a two-seater. Sports-car buyers know what they’re in for, and so do their passengers, but the Panamera isn’t a car intended for just the driver. That would be a waste of its roomy back seat and wagon’s worth of cargo space, and if you are going solo, why not get a 911 Carrera GTS instead? The Panamera GTS needs a very particular buyer: someone who wants an uncompromising performance ride but with more space than a 911, and feels it’s worth $156,195 to get it but not $228,495 for the far more comfortable and quicker Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid. If that’s you, enjoy. The Panamera GTS is a beauty and we’ll certainly enjoy hearing you drive by, but don’t ask us to go for a ride.