I’ve always thought the Porsche Panamera to be kind of the ugly duckling of the automotive world. Kudos for Porsche for venturing into a new market segment with a highly capable four wheel drive four door sedan, but did they really have to force the 911’s shape on it? It works on the short wheelbase sport coupe that is the 911, but it made the longer and larger Panamera look really bloated. Good thing it drives awesome and you can’t see the exterior from the behind the wheel. Now Porsche has decided to evolve the Panamera one step further with the e-hybrid Sport Turismo model that was debuted at this year’s Paris Auto Show. Sport Turismo is the flashy name they came up with for station wagon. The wagon has a frustrating soccer mom stigma here in the US, but in Europe high powered wagons are considered very cool. I’ve even heard it said that wagons are the mid-life crisis solution for European men. I love wagons, so it sounds like a fantastic tradition to me.

Something really interesting happened when Porsche’s designers set out to turn the Panamera into a wagon. Now that they had permission to deviate from the classic 911 shape, the Panamera started to fill out correct proportions and come into it’s own. The Sport Turismo looks absolutely fantastic. I think the it’s the car that the Panamera was meant to be. The ugly duckling has turned into the beautiful swan. Check out the video to see the designers work from clay models to the finished concept that was shown in Paris.