Porsche Panamera story: Auto Spies credited in the Wall Street Journal

The New Faces of Luxury

These are turbulent times. But the world's trouble hasn't prevented more people from getting rich, and that socioeconomic reality has luxury-car makers in a whirl.

With that kind of money, high-net-worth individuals world-wide could buy around three billion Chevy Cobalts if they wanted to take advantage of General Motors's "Employee Discounts for Everyone" sale, which is the talk of Detroit these days. But most of these fortunate people aren't going to do that, are they?

No, it's far more likely that people in this global upper class will be intrigued by last week's fresh round of reports heralding the arrival of a Porsche sports sedan, expected to be dubbed the Panamera. Enthusiast Web sites such as Autospies.com have been on this case for more than a year. Porsche executives have been hinting for some time that they wanted to expand the brand's portfolio beyond the current Boxster, 911 and Cayenne sport utility vehicle lines. (Martin Peters, a spokesman for Porsche in the U.S., confirmed only that the company is looking at a fourth model and plans to make a decision by the middle of this year -- which of course is right around now.)

Who needs a Porsche sedan that some guess could cost more than $100,000? Depends on your definition of the word "needs." If your net worth is a number with eight digits or more, a $125,000 car isn't too different, from a financial perspective, than a $30,000 car to someone who can reckon his assets with just six or seven fingers. These days, $30,000 vehicles are almost mass-market items: Go check out the sticker on a well-equipped Ford F-150, or a nicely loaded Volkswagen Passat or Chrysler 300.

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