There’s a quiet status to wagons. Once plentiful and pedestrian, crossovers’ erosion of the segment has left but a specialized few. Each survivor earns its keep by placing exceptional focus on a specific buyer — usually at a specific tax bracket. Volvo pitches hot architects with style and safety; Audi, AMG, and Porsche drop unassuming muscle for the sorts who need to get to their sailboat in a hurry.
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Fast wagons offer their adherents a tasteful alternative to the usual conspicuous luxury buys. Parked along a high-street peacock pen of secondhand Bentleys and local leasing lot plate frames, these models eschew typically high-polish bravado in favour of a quiet self-assurance. They’re still plenty nice of course, but their unassuming profile can be passed off to the layperson as a responsible utilitarian purchase, as ‘just a car’ within another tax bracket. Outwardly modest to all but those who know, then, they slip about in indulgent self-satisfaction — and rightly so.
This isn’t to say that these cars sneak all that far under the radar. Sculpted for Autobahn stability with plenty of enthusiast cues, the subtext is rich for those tuned will appreciate it. The 2025 Porsche Taycan Sport Turismo brings a lot to appreciate.
Now entering the second phase of its first generation, the ‘J2’ Porsche Taycan Sport Turismo rides an updated version of the MSB-J1 platform shared with the Audi e-Tron GT. The Panamera line has abandoned its wagons, but the Taycan crew is holding true. Following the initial J2 rollout in early 2024, the one to have gets even better for 2025.
To first clarify, Taycan GTS models are not the value picks: that proposition goes to the sweet-spot 4S. Instead, the new 2025 Taycan GTS sedan and performance-matched wagon lean into the performance-touring role.
That lean isn’t just figurative either: following from the new 400-volt hybridized Panamera Turbo, the 2025 Taycan GTS introduces Porsche’s G-countering ‘Active Ride’ to the option sheet. Enabled for comfort, independent hydraulic pumps thrust the chassis up against the pitch and roll forces typically felt under acceleration, braking, and sustained cornering. Rather than holding a straight keel, the aim is to tilt like a helicopter to avoid jostling passengers while maneuvering.
The bigger highlight is the update to battery power and energy density, however. Along with its fellow J2s, the 2025 Taycan GTS now packs 105 kilowatt-hours’ juice (97 usable) into the space that previously held a gross 93.6. Advances in the cells themselves also mean greater efficiency and energy density, and a 30-volt hike to 830 V contributes to greater throughput as well. Peak charging for this ‘Performance Battery Plus’ jumps from 270 to 320 kW, and spans a wider window. NRCan and EPA figures are still to come, but range expectations are up roughly a third — a claim borne out by Driving’s David Booth, who stretched 550 km in a 2025 Taycan Turbo sedan.
This Appalachian mountain run in the GTS made no effort at such economy. Instead, that lively suspension was set for a relatively sedate wet-weather cruise punctuated by occasional bursts of power and a few stops to soothe an uneasy stomach. Seasickness [or was it E-sickness –Ed.] gets the best of us.
Given a burst, the 2025 Taycan GTS steps its performance toward the last-gen Turbo’s. Acceleration to 100 km/h drops nearly half a second for a figure as low as 3.3, and output hikes to peaks of 690 hp and 583 lb-ft. Two motors, all four wheels, and the usual top-shelf rubber play their usual role, while the Taycan continues to employ two-speed gearing on the rear axle for takeoff torque and high-speed efficiency. Mechanical torque vectoring matches this to ensure that torque finds the right bias, so all good back there.
Also good is Porsche’s electric power steering, which stands as the best, most connected-feeling of this new electrically assisted generation. That wheel is directing a lot more car than in its siblings, of course: 2,294 kilos (5,057 pounds) in GTS sedan guise or 40 kilos more for the wagon. That sedan weight is 190 kilograms more than the Panamera GTS we drove a few weeks ago and 790 kg (1,741 pounds!) more than the 911 T we’d just tested on the same roads.
As in the near-weighted Panamera, it’s a good bit of mass, and it still feels it around bends. Carried eagerly with modern rubber so firmly planted, there is a tugging feeling that the body desperately wants to skew geometries that its software and linkages simply won’t allow. We didn’t get the chance to test a unit with standard adaptive air suspension (‘PASM’) and conventional sway bars on this run; all units were equipped to demonstrate the active setup. This makes some contribution to that floaty helicopter feeling, but never at any expense to driver confidence. As experienced in the Panamera Turbo S, the lean simply hikes and hunkers the car into a rollercoaster sensation at speed. Plenty heavy then, yes — but it’s still lighter and quicker than the new BMW M5.
The cabin experience is incrementally stepped from the J1 cars, which is to say tight in a secure-feeling way. Porsche’s excellent 18-way sport seats are standard in the GTS with the option of 14-way for those so inclined. Option-sheet aficionados can throw massagers or other treats in there, but there’s more interesting hardware to spend that money on.
Atop that list is Porsche’s available night-view camera, a nifty bit of kit that projects a low-angle thermal image of the road ahead into the cluster and which can highlight wandering critters or pedestrians in bright yellow boxes. Matched with Porsche’s Mercedes-beating HD Matrix LED headlamp upgrade, this is a highlight feature for rural drivers and urbanites alike.
Outside that feature, infotainment is mildly updated but still a little old-Porsche, and not in a nostalgic way. Porsche has held back on the Macan EV’s generational UX advancement, keeping to a straightforward and technically box-checking system that still sometimes strains the intuition. Small updates include next-gen Apple CarPlay cluster integration and a more logical but still passenger-baffling improvement to the screen-based vent aiming setup. No, you still can’t aim the vents directly or intuitively; Porsche knows better.
Rear headroom is a little squishy under the sedan’s fastback roofline, but remains plentiful in the wagon. Sedan boot space is 30 percent less than the Panamera, and at just 42 litres more than that, even Turismo capacity is almost a fifth short of the sedan. This means a fair bit less Herman-Miller hauling than a full-shouldered wagon like the RS 6 Avant or M5 Touring, but you’ve probably a service for that anyway.
Don’t have a service? Perhaps the used aisle might be preferable. The 2025 Porsche Taycans start from $138,550, but these sporting GTS models run base MSRPs of $170,150 for sedan and $172,450 for Sport Turismo models after $2,950 destination fee. That’s barely more than the new ‘affordable’ 911 T, so neither outlandish nor otherworldly. Options will get you though: the two cars you see here tally to $267,955 for the sedan and $256,075 for the wagon. Bear in mind as you tick those boxes that the usual Porsche resale rules haven’t seemed to apply quite so favourably to the Taycans, but then, hopefully any enthusiast buyer is purchasing for themself — not for the next fellow.
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