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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder with Porsche Panamera

CNET Car Tech reviews the 2010 Porsche Panamera, and finds that ugly is only skin deep.

Wayne Cunningham Managing Editor / Roadshow
Wayne Cunningham reviews cars and writes about automotive technology for CNET's Roadshow. Prior to the automotive beat, he covered spyware, Web building technologies, and computer hardware. He began covering technology and the Web in 1994 as an editor of The Net magazine.
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Wayne Cunningham
Josh Miller/CNET
2010 Porsche Panamera
Josh Miller/CNET

When the Panamera showed up in our garage, we were hesitant to approach it. This strange-looking vehicle garnered plenty of approbation when photos began to emerge on the Internet over the last couple of years. Would its strangeness rub off on us?

Figuring the inside had to be nicer than the outside, we made our way into the cabin. Here we found classic Porsche luxury, part of the reason people pay so much for models under this marque. And it got better when we started it up, the big V-8 made a pleasantly refined noise.

But driving it removed all of our doubts. This thing moves fast and handles incredibly well. Porsche's double-clutch transmission shifts quickly, and never left us wanting for power. The more time we spent with the car, the more we liked it, until even its exterior began to please.

Check out our 2010 Porsche Panamera 4S review.