Story: Reynald Fries
Photography: Andrew Link
As soon as the team at Platinum Motorsport of Los Angeles finishes building a whip, a new client enters the shop to put in a request for another car, and the cycle continues. With a workload like that, the Platinum crew always has to be creative—enough to think of new and unique ways to transform vehicles so that no two are alike.
When a client came calling for a new ride, Platinum owner Jack Keshishyan had an open canvas and wanted ideal parameters; the whip had to be a convenient daily driver but also had to be really fast and fun. The ideal candidate to meet both prerequisites: the Porsche Panamera Turbo. The challenge, however, was to make it different from the many Panameras previously built by PMS. Jack decided he’d restyle the Panamera using Mansory’s newest full carbon-fiber body kit—a $50,000 extravaganza like few others. It includes every single carbon-fiber piece that Mansory has to offer for the Panamera, so it alone transforms the Porsche into a completely different car. “We’ve done over a dozen Mansory Panameras, so for this one, we just wanted to make it completely different to stand out,” Jack explains.
The paint is what sets this car apart from the rest of Platinum’s Panameras. “It’s the first one to be done with that color combination,” Jack points out. “We just wanted to do something a little crazy and outside the box. The car is painted matte Lamborghini Orange.” Every other Mansory Panamera done by Platinum was black, white or gray. In fact, the flashiest color they’ve ever chosen was matte white, and it landed the cover of RIDES two years ago exactly (May 2011).
It’s a $20,000 paint job, and the hard work needed to complete it sheds some light on the reason for the hefty cost. “We pulled everything off the car—engine, doors, complete interior, windshields, everything,” Jack said. “And it’s been completely repainted, inside and out, as if it came from the factory that way.” To add to the complexity, it’s a three-stage paint job, so each part of the car (which started its life black) had to be painted with a white base coat (a crucial step to ensure the end result is vibrant), followed by another coat of orange, then the final coat of PPG metallic Lamborghini Orange to finish it. The whole process took about four weeks.
Every modification of the car was done in-house at Platinum Motorsport, even the wheels—staggered 22-inch Agetro rims built in-house and custom painted matte gunmetal gray.
As far as upgrades and restyling goes, this Panamera is all about the kit and the paint. It’s a four-door daily ride, so people tend to underestimate its performance. But remember, it’s a Turbo, and with a Mansory suspension, a full Mansory exhaust system and an ECU tuning chip, it feels like what a Porsche Turbo should feel like, plus more. And to give an idea of how much this car is worth altogether, let’s remember it cost $160,000 before any modding was done to it. Big money was dropped into this whip—but it wound up producing accompanying results.
Spec The Technique:
Year/Make/Model: 2012 Porsche Panamera Turbo
Performance: Mansory Sport Exhaust, suspension; ECU tuning chip
Exterior: PPG Matte Lamborghini Orange paint; Full Carbon-Fiber Mansory Customization Programme for Porsche Panamera with exposed carbon-fiber hood, rockers and rear wing
Interior: Matte Lamborghini-orange bolts to match exterior paint; Passport 9500i radar detector with front and rear jammers
Ice: Stock Bose sound system
Wheels/Tires: 22-inch Agetro FS5 wheels painted matte gunmetal gray; Pirelli P ZERO tires, 265/30/22 front, 315/25/22 rear
