PORSCHE Panamera owners should be good at counting. From measuring garage width to accommodate the now-1937mm-wide liftback, to tallying the amount of luxury equipment and how much power each available version has, in the upper-large car segment numbers can mean much.

And in particular, financial digits. For the second-generation Panamera a buyer can (in hundreds of thousands of dollars) count to two and purchase a 3.0-litre turbocharged V6 petrol version, move to three and select a 2.9-litre twin-turbo version (as tested here) or a 4.0-litre twin-turbo-diesel V8, then even perhaps extend to four and snare the flagship petrol versions of that latter configuration.

The question is indeed whether this middle-specification Panamera 4S is the pick of the range. It is neither low nor high on the pricing scale relative to other model grades, and it promises to mix the luxury of the Panamera 4 with some sportiness from the Panamera Turbo.

Hopefully, in traditional Porsche style, it also moves beyond a ‘by the numbers’ approach to making a vehicle, even within a genre renowned for having its owners positioned behind the driver’s seat.