The flagship Porsche Museum in Stuttgart is a masterpiece, full of Porsche history from before the company started to its present-day and future. It’s right there in Zuffenhausen, down the street from the historic Werk 1 building where the automaker got its start in its current home base.
One of the coolest things about it is the opportunity to drive one of Porsche’s newest cars through the Porsche Drive program, and it initially looked like one unlucky individual fumbled their time royally right in front of the museum doors. You can see the Panamera roll slowly past the glass front door nose-first into the wall.
The Porsche Drive loaners get parked right outside of the front doors of the museum, no doubt to entice visitors to spend a little more to test them out. GTBOARD.com, the Facebook page which posted the video, said that they believed that this Panamera was one of the loaners and not some other display car, although they couldn’t say for sure.
However, a Porsche spokesman clarified via email what really happened, and this wasn’t the world’s most embarrassing test drive after all. On Monday, November 19, there was a photo shoot planned with this Panamera 4 E-Hybrid 10 Years Edition in the plaza in front of the museum.
The special edition Panamera started rolling away at walking pace without a driver or any passengers on board and ultimately smacked the wall. A photographer had moved the car into place and had gotten out before it rolled away.
Porsche is currently investigating whether this odd crash was due to operator error while parking the car. There were no injuries, aside from maybe the photographer’s ego.
Porsche had to recall its older 2010-2016 model year Panameras due to a roll-away risk, but this doesn’t really look like a mechanical failure. A conversation among The Drive’s staff concluded that this just looks like someone had an extremely embarrassing day at the museum.
Here’s hoping your day is going better than whoever was in charge of this Panamera.
[UPDATE: The Drive reached out to Porsche to confirm who exactly was behind the wheel and that no one was hurt in this very low-speed collision, and this article has been updated after publication to include their response.]
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