2011 Porsche Panamera

The Good: Price, decent acceleration, wonderful handling, roomy, sumptuous interior

The Bad: Expensive options, four-person maximum seating, no stick shift

The Bottom Line: A truly great luxury car at a bargain (for Porsche) price

I'm a big fan of the Porsche (PAH3:GR) Panamera, the four-door luxury car that made its debut in 2010. Until recently, I had only driven the Panamera S, which is powered by a 4.8-liter, 400-horsepower V8 engine. What about the base model, which is only now making its debut in the U.S. and has a 3.6-liter, 300 horsepower V6 under its hood? Would it be too slow and pedestrian to seriously consider, even though it costs a good 15 grand less than the S?

In a word: no. The new, entry-level Panamera is essentially the same car as the S and it, too, is a joy to drive. You give up some raw speed but not much else, and the base model may handle a tiny bit better than the S because it's slightly lighter. Unless you're planning to log time on a racetrack, this new Porsche is plenty quick. And there's good news for denizens of the snowbelt: The Panamera is actually slightly faster with all-wheel drive than with the standard rear-wheel drive and it handles marvelously in ice and snow.

The base Panamera starts at $75,375 with rear-wheel drive and $79,875 with all-wheel-drive. That compares with a starting price of $90,775 for the Panamera S, and $136,275 for the Turbo. Standard equipment on the new entry-level model is the same as on the S and includes leather upholstery, eight-way power front seats with driver memory functions, hard-drive-based navigation and 11-speaker sound systems, a sunroof, a power rear hatchback, rear parking sensors, a tilting and telescoping steering wheel, and a cooled glove box.

The base price doesn't mean much, however. As usual with Porsche, there's an extremely long list of attractive but pricey options. When I outfitted an entry-level Panamera, I easily topped 90 grand and was just getting started (more on options later).

The obvious advantage of the V6 engine is improved fuel economy, but the gains are relatively small. The base Panamera is rated to get 18 miles-per-gallon in the city and 27 on the highway, or 21 combined—only 2 mpg better, on average, than the Panamera S. Still, that's good enough to rank the entry-level Panamera with Audi's (VOW:GR)

redesigned A8 and the Mercedes S400 Hybrid as the most fuel-efficient cars in the category.BMW's (BMW:GR) 6-powered 740i, at 17/25/20, is close but doesn't do quite as well.The V8-powered BMW 750i (15/23/18) and Mercedes S550 (15/23/18) trail behind.

The Panamera is selling very well. In 2010, the model's first full year on the market, the company sold 7,741 Panameras, making it Porsche's No. 2 model in the U.S. behind the Cayenne SUV, which had sales of 8,343.

Behind the Wheel

The key difference between the Panamera and the Panamera S is acceleration. Porsche says the base Panamera jumps from 0 to 60 in 6.0 seconds with rear-wheel drive—5.8 seconds with all-wheel drive. The time drops to 5.2 seconds (5.0 seconds with AWD) in the S (and to 4.0 seconds in the Turbo, which comes only with AWD).

If 0.8 seconds is worth 15 grand to you, then, the Panamera S is your car. If not, the entry-level Panamera will suit you because in other respects it's virtually identical to the S. Even the engine is essentially the same as the V8 in the S, but with two cylinders stripped out. It's a much sweeter engine than the V6 in the Porsche Cayenne. It emits a satisfying growl when you punch the gas.