Great Scott, the Panamera has a lot of buttons!

Quick! Find the button for the air conditioner without looking.

(Credit: www.xcar.com.cn)

Spy photos of the Panamera--Porsche's upcoming wagon, for lack of a better term--have been leaking all over the Web for some time now. Only recently have we been able to see the vehicle's interior.

We expected the typical German button-heavy interface. Just one look at the Cayenne's interior and you'll see that Porsche isn't afraid to slap a bunch of buttons on the dash. However, these somewhat blurry spy shots show that perhaps an intervention is required to curb Porsche's button addiction.

A quick eyeball count shows a whopping 44 buttons and switches on the center console alone! Add the 11 buttons for the roof console and a touch screen to the equation, and you've got a recipe for interface overload. Adding insult to injury, there appear to be blanks to allow Porsche engineers to add even more buttons at a later date.

Oddly, the steering wheel is devoid of buttons, save the thumb switches for the transmission's manual mode. Some basic stereo or hands-free calling controls would be nice, but this is most likely a prototype, so perhaps they're still to come.

The icing on the cake of the Panamera's odd interior has to be the key fob, which is shaped like the vehicle itself.

The keyfob is shaped like the Panamera itself, in case you forget what you're driving.

(Credit: www.xcar.com.cn)

Of course, the interface could have been worse. At least Porsche has gotten rid of the full numeric keypad in favor of what we hope is Bluetooth integration. But with all of the advances in voice-command technology and touch-screen interface design, it's disappointing to see a vehicle of Porsche's stature and price with such a complicated interface. We're interested in seeing your thoughts in the comments below.