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Porsche Panamera Wheels Make for a Hot Black-Market Item, Owner Finds Out

What some drivers don’t know is that there is a huge market for stolen luxury car bits, such as wheels, mirrors, or badges. Of course, if you daily drive something rather generic like an Accord or a RAV4, you could go for years, or maybe even decades without someone maliciously interfering with its appearance.
Porsche Panamera 6 photos
Photo: GTBoard
Porsche PanameraPorsche PanameraPorsche PanameraPorsche PanameraPorsche Panamera
Luxury/premium car owners, however, are a lot more likely to find their rides missing various appendages from time to time, and trust us when we tell you that seeing your car stripped can be a gut-wrenching feeling. Is it better than having it stolen altogether? Of course, although statistically speaking, you’re way more likely to lose just parts of your car, as opposed to the whole thing, due to thieves.

We found out about this particular incident through GTBoard, with images from a Porsche Center in Stockholm, Sweden showing a late-model Porsche Panamera stripped of all four wheels. Initially, the car was left to rest on its rotors (see gallery), before it was propped up on wooden pallets as a temporary measure.

This was clearly a professional job. The culprits were probably in and out before anybody was the wiser, which is saying something considering the location of the vehicle – looks like a private lot, and there appears to be a fence around it.

Now, if we were to play the guessing game, we’d say that the car was probably fitted with an expensive set of optional wheels. Thieves rarely go through the trouble of boosting some standard set, even though standard Panamera wheels can still fetch a pretty penny. You can spec a Panamera with one of 20+ wheel models/colors, some of which cost as much as $5,500 in the United States (Sport Design and Exclusive Design wheels).

As for the specification of the car, it looks like it might be a Turbo, judging by the fact that it has the extendable (and expandable) rear spoiler and doesn’t have the Porsche Ceramic Composite Brakes (PCCB) on (standard on a Turbo S). It also appears to be wearing the carmaker’s Matrix Design headlights.
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About the author: Sergiu Tudose
Sergiu Tudose profile photo

Sergiu got to experience both American and European car "scenes" at an early age (his father drove a Ford Fiesta XR2 supermini in the 80s). After spending over 15 years at local and international auto publications, he's starting to appreciate comfort behind the wheel more than raw power and acceleration.
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