I received a beautiful artic silver cardboard box in by "special mail" yesterday that had a hardback picture book (about the size and thickness of a children's book, of pictures of the new Panamera, along with what looked and felt to be a kep fob/electronic key for the car (very cool, too, it is shaped like the car itself, with buttons along the roof) and a tiny ceramic Porsche emblem on the "hood".

On close inspection, although the buttons and the panel for the battery on this key looked real, none operated or opened, but the hood pulled off, and it was actually a 16 Mb memory stick with images of the car, desktop wallpaper for your computer, etc.

Pretty neat.

The car, by the way, is just butt ugly from the back and even with the top end turbo V8, I can't see it succeeding, except among hardcore Porsche fanatics, in a market segment that includes the Jag XF, Maserati QuattroPorte, Mercedes CLK, M10, etc. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.

Still, I have a really cool memory stick after deleting all the images and such.

 

Yep, you hit the nail on the head; this thing's butt-ugly and it's hard to imagine the porsche design team wanting this market segment badly enough to release this half-baked effort prior to further aesthetic refinement. and i used to think the 7-series bmw was a lump...?