Before Porsche stopped making diesels, it made the fastest production diesel car in the world

​Announced: Porsche will no longer make diesels.

It’s the latest casualty of the years-long VW group diesel scandal. Does anyone care? Possibly not. Maybe they shouldn’t.

But one thing you may not have known is that it will mark the end of the fastest production diesel car in the world, the Porsche Panamera 4S diesel.

Powered by a 4.0-litre twin-turbo diesel V8, the Panamera 4S diesel produced a whopping 310kW/850Nm. Sure, it also weighed north of two tonnes, but could accelerate from 0-100km/h in just 4.5 seconds.

The 4S Diesel cost $318,600 in Australia and was very quietly discontinued months ago at the beginning of 2018. The good news (or bad news, if you love the environment…) is you can still get that same monster diesel V8 in the Audi SQ7. 

The performance is pretty close too, with Audi tweaks bringing performance to 320kW/900Nm, able to send the 2405kg seven-seat SUV from 0-100km/h in 4.9 seconds. It’s also the fastest production diesel SUV in the world and comes in at a fraction of the Panamera’s cost at $155,500.

Given the tide against diesel though, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the next SQ7 being a hybrid or at very least, petrol-only. In Europe the tide has certainly changed, with 63 per cent of Panameras sold being hybrids.

In terms of the future of Porsche, the company now says that by 2025 every second new Porsche vehicle will be electrified. Hopefully, not all of them will look like the Misson E concepts…

With the Panamera 4S diesel dead, the mantle of fastest diesel production car apparently falls to the Alpina D5 S, which launched around the time of the Panamera's discontinuation.

Based on a BMW 5 series, the 3.0-litre in-line six diesel (B57) is tweaked by Alpina to produce 285kW/800Nm, It'll do 0-100 in 4.4 seconds.

So, uh… fast Diesels… Smoke 'em if you got 'em? Tell us what you think in the comments below.