Having spent the last week or so belting about in the rather sublime B road bad boy that is the Mitsubishi Evo X, which has a rather spartan, rather lack lustre interior, (stay tuned later this wek for more on one of our favourite everyman heros), we’ve been finding ourselves longing for a cosy, testosterone-enriched mancave of a cabin like one of these.

The example of sixties American futursm is a cross breed in fact : the 1963 Chevy Corvair Testudo was a design study by Carrozeria Bertone that took a space age piece of Americana and gave it the Turin design treatment.

The Lancia Sibilo concept, meanwhile, was a typically outrageous seventies evolution, also from Bertone, of what had been the groundbreaking Stratos.

For some reason the Stratos wasn’t seen as good enough for the futurists. They just couldn’t let it lie! Was there something about the seventies that made the leather extra luscious?

The Maserati=engined Citroen collab of the seventies that was the SM (above) is, of course, the ultimate in cool interiors that actually made it out on to the road. Bless that Franco-Italian aesthetic that defined what it was to build a car interior that you wanted to spend time in, not just fill up the spaces in your day.

We’re looking forward to the return of this sort of modernism…

Yesterday Porsche for the first time presented the interior concept of their forthcoming four door GT the Panamera. The long awaited challenge to the upper echelons of the saloon market is due to go on sale in the UK from 12 September 2009, and will come with V8 power units and a luxurious, hi-tech interior ambience. One defining feature of the Panamera’s cabin is the centre console, which extends from the fascia to the rear seating area – and another is a truly cockpit-like environment for all four seats. From the look of the pics, it won’t just be mum and dad up front who get the full Porsche GT experience. And as every good Grand Touring family need to be protected as well as thrilled, the car will come with driver and front passenger airbags, curtain airbags as well as – on the front seats – side and knee airbags. Side airbags will be available for the rear seats as an optional extra. Four-zone automatic air conditioning is available as a further option, providing individual adjustment of temperature, blower intensity and air distribution for each seat. Porsche have introduced a truly cutting edge ICE system to the Panamera range in the Burmester, which features more than 2,400 square centimetres of ‘sound membranes’ which apparently deliver a near live quality audio experience. 16 speakers, each of them routed by its own amp channel will put out more than 1,000 watts complemented by an active subwoofer together with a 300 W Class D amplifier. This little gadget will of course, be an optional extra! At the head of the Panamera line-up is the Panamera Turbo, which will offer a twin-turbo 4.8-litre V8 developing 500 bhp (368 kW), with power transmitted by the Porsche ‘double clutch’ transmission (PDK). With all-wheel drive as standard, the Panamera Turbo accelerates to 62mph (100 km/h) in 4.2 seconds and reaches a top speed of 188mph (303 km/h). Fuel consumption in the EU combined cycle is 23.2mpg (12.2 ltr/100 km) and Co2 emissions are 286 g/km. Pricing and other detailed information is et to be released, but we think it’s fair to say that the Panamera will be cheaper than the Ferrari 612 Scaglietti, but a fair bit more pricey than your Audi A8!