#PanameraWagon

In most cases, it’s a foregone conclusion. When there are multiple bodystyles available, the fewest number of buyers exist for the wagon.

The Porsche Panamera’s case is unique, however. There is no Porsche Panamera sedan. This is a battle between the regular second-generation Porsche Panamera — a hatchback or liftback or fastback or backbackbackgone or whatever you want to call it — and the new Sport Turismo, a shooting brake five years in the making.

Yet with limited practical benefit, “It’s a question of taste; some people like the Sport Turismo more, some people like the sports sedan more,” Porsche’s sales and marketing director told Stefan Utsch, told Motoring.

80 percent of taste buds apparently prefer the regular Panamera.

When TTAC’s reliability scribe Michael Karesh bought a used Taurus X a few years ago, he was able to get it as a nearly-new car for about half of the original retail price. It’s not hard to understand why; the Taurus X, which combined the high “hip point” from the vaguely-Volvo-based Ford Five Hundred with a rather humpbacked wagon profile, was showroom poison and widely derided by automotive journalists who were in the full flush of an industry-loved love affair with “crossovers”.

Those same journos are now competing to pile the greatest number of accolades on the “Panamera Sport Turismo” concept, presumably because there are going to be some awesome European press trips involved for the writers who can generate the most suction, er, traction on the topic.