Porsche Panamera Shooting Brake CONFIRMED – & it’s heading for the USA too (+video)

The Porsche Panamera Shooting Brake – a production versions of Porsche’s Sport Turismo Concept – is going in to production and will arrive by 2017.

There have been prototypes of the new Porsche Panamera running around for some time, and we know the new Panamera will debut at the Paris Motor Show in September.

But now we know, for sure, that the next generation Panamera will also spawn an Estate / Shooting Brake version based on the Sport Turismo Concept.

Porsche’s US boss, Klaus Zellmer, has confirmed to Automotive News that not only is the Panamera Shooting Brake going in to production, but that Porsche will sell it in the US, not normally a car market that buys estate cars, where Porsche believe it will be well received.

Zellmer did say that the Panamera Estate won’t be arriving when the new Panamera does later this year, but the inference is that it will arrive in 2017 in Europe and a year later in the US.

Both the new Panamera and the Shooting Brake will be underpinned by the new MSB platform – which will also underpin the next generation of the Bentley Continental GT – which is more flexible than the current Panamera platform, and weighs less.

That makes it likely that the Panamera range will extend beyond the regular Panamera and Shooting Brake, with a strong possibility that we will finally get to see the rebirth of the 928 as a Panamera Coupe too.

We can also expect a range of new petrol and diesel engines – including a 4.0 litre V8 with 600bhp sourced from Audi – plug-in hybrids, new 9-speed automatic gearboxes and a four-wheel drive version with a diesel engine.

Porsche Panamera Shooting Brake Video