So, this happened...

@GothicGremlin

On Monday morning, hikers discovered a Porsche Panamera on the orange trail in Wissahickon Valley Park, setting of wild speculation about how it got there and whose it is.Courtesy of Jack Fugett

• by
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• William Bender
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• and
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• Ryan W. Briggs
• Published 
• May 22, 2025, 1:03 p.m. ET

The Porsche seemed to have materialized overnight, looking so incongruous right there in the middle of a narrow, rocky trail alongside Wissahickon Creek that it might as well have been a downed UFO.

The trails of Wissahickon Valley Park are for hikers, runners, bikers, and horses.

They are not for drivers of Porsche Panameras, sports cars with a $104,795 starting sticker price and a 5.2-inch ground clearance that will make you think twice about certain speed bumps.

Some sections of the Orange Trail, where the car ended up, are “rugged and may be difficult for inexperienced trail users,” the park website warns.

Yet, there it was Monday morning, a Porsche. With some fiber pills inside and a probiotic shake, according to one hiker.

More intriguingly: The license plate was odd. Only two characters, flanked by what appeared to be the Pennsylvania coat of arms. The type of plate you might see on a government official’s car, basically everyone speculated.

“I glanced up and thought, Oh, my God, it’s a bear!” said Bob Cahill, who was slightly distracted by a podcast when he encountered the car Monday afternoon.

“I had never seen anything so massive right smack in the middle of the woods,” Cahill recounted the next day. “And here it turned out to be a Porsche.”

The Wissahickon regulars were transfixed, then transformed into amateur detectives. Instantly, seamlessly, as if they had been preparing for this day when a huge object would appear in front of them, blocking their path and demanding close examination.

How could this even happen? Entry points and travel routes were contemplated. Chestnut Hill Avenue to the east? Bells Mill Road to the north? Maybe down the Lavender Trail.

Who does this car belong to? A state senator. No, a retired state Supreme Court justice. Or a wayward son.

Why is it here? Maybe it was stolen. An insurance scam. Is there something bad in the trunk?

Courtesy of Jack FugettA Porsche Panamera is towed out of the Wissahickon Park on Tuesday, after its owner took a series of wrong turns and ended up on a hiking trail.

Tuesday morning, a tow crew with some sort of badass-looking ATV — who were those guys, anyway? — showed up and hauled the car away, dragging it backward up a connector trail in a manner that Porsches are probably not meant to be handled.

The only thing that remained Wednesday was a patch of dark dirt on the Orange Trail where the antifreeze had leaked out.

But hikers and online sleuths continued to shuck and pry. They wanted answers.

Would there be criminal charges? Where is the Philadelphia Parking Authority when you need it?

“Maybe he just drove down here to go to the bathroom,” joked Jack Fugett, who recorded video of the Porsche being towed.

On Facebook, the Roxborough Rants & Raves group did what its name suggests. Theories emerged, from plausible to conspiracy.

“I knew I should’ve made a left at Albuquerque,” one member quipped.

Another dead end

Twenty-five minutes away, in Lansdale, Kathie Ellzey wasn’t particularly surprised Wednesday when an Inquirer reporter knocked on her door asking about a Porsche Panamera that, it turns out, isn’t hers.

She has seen the car dozens of times on black-and-white E-ZPass violation notices.

Every time the owner of the Panamera — who, to be clear, is not her, she reiterated — drives through tolls without an E-ZPass transponder, Ellzey gets a violation mailed to her.

That’s because her license plate is so close to the two digits on the Porsche — hers has a zero instead of an “O” — that the toll cameras apparently can’t tell the difference. She keeps getting fined.

“It’s not mine,” Ellzey said of the mystery Porsche.

So, another dead end.

But Ellzey’s frustrations soon gave way to intrigue. Even she wanted to know how this Porsche that has caused her so many headaches had ended up in Wissahickon Valley Park, with no driver around.

“I don’t know who it is,” Ellzey said. “When he doesn’t pay the tolls, we get the notice. It’s just the craziest thing.”

Mystery solved

This is what actually happened, according to police, park rangers, and hikers who know the trails best.

On Sunday night, an 84-year-old man was driving his Porsche Panamera down Bells Mill Road when he made a wrong turn onto Forbidden Drive, which runs through the park.

From Forbidden Drive, he apparently made another wrong turn onto the historic Thomas Mill Covered Bridge that crosses over Wissahickon Creek, proceeding up a hill to the White Trail, then another wrong turn onto a connector trail, ending up on the Orange Trail on the opposite of the creek.

In total, about a mile or so into the heavily wooded park.

Revised map of car driving through Wissahickon Vally Park on a hiking trailSteve Madden

“It was an older man who was confused,” said Sarah Marley, interim executive director of Friends of the Wissahickon, the nonprofit stewards of the park. “It’s a very steep area. I’m just grateful he is OK and the car did not go off the side of the trail.”

No crime. No stolen car, insurance scam, or dead body. No scandal involving a wealthy state senator or judge. Or their impetuous offspring.

The driver had to call for help and be assisted out of the park, his son said. He said his father, who is hugely embarrassed, simply got very lost. The Inquirer agreed not to publish the family’s name after confirming with Philadelphia police and park rangers that no crime had been committed.

“It was pitch dark, and he was just assuming at some point it was wide enough for him to turn around,” the son explained.

To be fair, the Orange Trail does lead back to Bells Mill Road, although it’s so rocky that if you kept driving that way in a Porsche, the undercarriage would probably look like burned fettuccine by the time you got to the street.

The son said he understands why the ordeal led to so much speculation, both online and on the trails.

“I gotta tell you,” he sighed, “it looked bad.”

As for that official-looking license plate, the son said he believes his father purchased the coat-of-arms emblems years ago and put them on his car because they looked cool.

“I was like, ‘Dad, do you realize how dumb this sounds?’” the son said, comparing the last 72 hours to the plot of the Coen brothers film Burn After Reading.

Sahlee Brown, park ranger supervisor for the northwest section of Philadelphia, said he was hoping for a calmer rest of the week on the trails of the Wissahickon, dealing with the regular business of managing an urban wilderness.

“Just horses,” Brown said. “No Porsches.”

That's what I thought. Too damned breezy. Not just the wrong turn on what is obviously a park trail, but the many EZ Pass violations.

It's not clear that this gentleman was referred. Reading between the lines, the people involved are likely protected by a bubble of privilege and the assumption this will have served as a CTJ for the adult son.

Were it a Toyota, I suspect the odds of a referral would be higher under similar circumstances.

HB