Porsche Panamera on Vertical Track

Having just been launched, the new Porsche Panamera S already exceeded its normal limits last Sunday. The luxury sports sedan experienced vertical movement with the help of a high-speed elevator, worthy of Panamera's performances - 400 meters per minute, as reported by drive.com.au.

This upward movement was imposed by the need to get Porsche's fourth model to the 94th floor of the second-tallest building in the world (World Financial Center) and at the same time the place where the 2009 Shanghai Auto Show was about to start.

And since cars don't yet fly, organizers had to vertically squeeze Panamera's a** into the elevator, using a special designed rig, with hoists and a pallet so 'the star' won't suffer any scratches or dents.

Pretty understandable though. We would have expected the car to be wrapped up in a protective foil and lot of polystyrene around it. Also, a 'touch it and you'll be dead' sticker wouldn't have hurt.

When we first heard about a new Porsche model to be unveilled for the first time in Shanghai we thought only of its design and performances.  Can't say the question 'Would it fit into an elevator?' crossed our minds.  Though it was a skyscrapper's freight elevator, that still isn't designed to actually climb loaded with a luxury car.

The Panamera is measuring 195,7 inches in length and 55,9 inches in height and with only few inches on either side to spare, it was almost as if the elevator was designed to fit it.

Porsche is introducing five new technologies with the Panamera, including the first Start-Stop system mated to an automatic transmission, air suspension with additional air volume available on demand in each spring, as well as active aerodynamics with an adjustable, multi-dimensional, extendable rear spoiler on the Panamera Turbo. None of them helped it when placed in an elevator...