Luckily Porsche knows a thing or two about making livable performance cars and as such my Panamera GTS takes this blatant misuse in its stride. Driven at these slow speeds in amongst this strict land of skyscrapers and hotels and oil wells it feels about as laid back and docile as your cousin’s Volkswagen Golf GTI.
Comfortable too. Those 18-way electric sports seats might look like track-day specials but they’re engineered to keep your meat-covered skeleton happy — even after a good few hours at the helm. Being a GTS model Porsche didn’t skimp on Alcantara, a fabric that adorns everything from the centre seat panels and sun visors to the steering wheel and headliner.
Other standout standard features include the Sport Chrono Package (identifiable by the now familiar stopwatch on the centre console and race car-inspired drive mode switch on the steering wheel) as well as the fantastically intuitive Porsche Advanced Cockpit infotainment system. The latter is the stuff of sweaty tech-porn dreams with its massive 12.3-inch HD touchscreen on the centre console plus two equally arresting seven-inch screens mounted within the instrument binnacle.
What does seem unnecessary, however, is the addition of a head-up display that projects information onto the windscreen in front of you. Back in the 1990s head-up displays kind of made sense but now they feel somewhat redundant. Not to mention distracting. Luckily you can turn it off, which is what I do when we arrive at the meat of this exotic launch sandwich: the Bahrain International Circuit.
It’s quite a place this: a track of numerous layouts that has hosted everything from Formula One to the World Endurance Championship. Scan the circuit map and you’ll spy a generous blend of high and low-speed bends, not to mention a main straight that must, to my calculations at least, be about one kilometre in length.
It’s a ballsy locale to launch an automobile, especially one that’s essentially a four-door luxury saloon weighing close on three tons. Amazingly though, the Panamera GTS takes it in its stride. During my first session out on track tailing Le Mans-winning racing driver, Michael Christensen, I’m free to get a taste of the speed and acceleration this thing is capable of.
That V8 engine immediately takes centre stage thanks to its burbly soundtrack and super flat torque curve. You’ve basically got 620Nm to play with from 1,800rpm all the way up to nearly 5,000rpm, which gives it some enviable punch when exiting corners.