Porsche’s Panemara Turbo is best driven at home

In Spain, stay mainly on the plain when test-driving your rental.

Porsche Panemara Turbo.

Jeremy Clarkson is away. That’s what it should say at the bottom of the page this week. Because I am away. I’m on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca, sitting in the darkened confines of the villa’s dining room, looking at the sunshine streaming through the windows and listening to the children playing in the pool, wondering how I came to be writing a column, and hitting the keys on my laptop slightly more viciously than usual. My editor had called, and he doesn’t take no for an answer. “I’m on holiday,” I said, firmly. “Yes,” he replied, as though I hadn’t spoken, “but would you write a column if I got you a car?”

Transport is always a tricky issue on family holidays. You rent a car, which means you have to spend the first six days of your holiday at the airport, waiting as the girl at the counter writes War and Peace on her computer. And then you are given the keys to something that you can never drive because you’re always too drunk. I had rented a seven-seat, two-wheel-drive Nissan X-Trail, which, fully loaded and then loaded a bit more, simply would not climb the road to the villa. I had a choice from the driver’s seat. I could either spin the front wheels, which made a terrible noise, or spin the clutch, which made a terrible smell.

After the editor called, I peered over the hedge at the ruined X-Trail and thought: “Oh what the hell.” So, two days later, a man turned up with a Porsche Panamera Turbo that he’d driven from Stuttgart in Germany. It was exactly the same car I drove at home a couple of months ago. Back then, I thought it was tremendous, powerful and smooth and fitted with an interior that’s sublime. It remains a car I would happily use on a day-to-day basis in the UK.

However, it’s not what I’d call a first-choice machine here on the sun-kissed island of Mallorca. First, it’s quite wide. It’s so wide in fact that it goes up the road to our villa with, in places, just half an inch of clearance on either side. That requires immense concentration, and that’s hard because its parking sensors and collision warning system are in meltdown and the interior sounds like that nuclear plant in The China Syndrome. All of this stuff can be turned off, of course, but not when one wheel is dangling over a cliff, one door mirror is half an inch from a stone post and you have two teenagers in the back saying they feel sick. I’ve had the car for four days now and the fastest I’ve been is 9km/h.

Yesterday we went to the beach where they filmed The Night Manager, which is at the bottom of our drive. And it took nearly two hours. I arrived a nervous wreck and couldn’t have a refreshing drink because later in the day I’d have to drive back. That was even harder because we got stuck behind some Spanish Doobie Brothers in a Ford who, when they met something coming the other way, were consumed with the need for some peace and love and reversed. Which meant I and about 200 other cars had to do the same thing.

After a while I resorted to the horn and some rude gestures, and they responded in kind, emerging from the smoky interior to let me know that it was hard enough to drive a car on that road at the best of times, but it was especially difficult when all of them thought they were being attacked by a Klingon Bird-of-Prey.

It was at this point that I realised the Porsche was fitted with German plates. It meant that, as we finally got past the erratic Ford, using a dribble of smooth turbo power, we could hear the passenger muttering to his mates: “Malditos Alemanes!”

Porsche Panamera Turbo

Engine: 4.0-litre V8 twin-turbo petrol (404 kW/770Nm) | Average fuel: 9.4 litres per 100km | Transmission: Eight-speed dual-clutch automatic, all-wheel drive | Price: From $376,000