Engineered to perfection
Porsche’s new Cayenne can be dirty, classy, sensible or a pure thrill ride
YOU HAVE a family, enjoy the outdoors and the long dirt roads that Namibia offers, need to be at bespoke functions regularly, drop and pick up the kids and their friends with all their sports kit, have (a whack of) money and understand the thrill of seeing the needle in the red.
May I, in this case, present the new Porsche Cayenne. It pretty much does everything mentioned, and then some.
Now in its third generation, the German carmaker has got the recipe of performance SUV almost 100 percent spot-on. Well, virtually is, I think, an understatement.
While I know there have been a lot of rumblings about Porsche having won South Africa’s Car of the Year a number of times in the past, the fact is they make brilliant cars and if you look close enough in every category that they sell, whether it be niche cars or more popular everyday SUVS such as the Cayenne, they lead with relative ease. In terms of the Car of the Year competition, blame the system, not the car.
The SA Guild of Motoring Journalists has seen fit to address these issues for the next Car of the Year competition, but having spent some time behind the wheel of the Cayenne, the Cayenne S and the brutal yet delightful Cayenne Turbo, don’t have a wobbly if Porsche enter and walk away with the honours again.
You see, when you have a plethora of engineers working for you, most with doctor’s degrees, and you have to work within German precision parameters, the odds on something being “just okay” are almost zero. And when those engineers are also petrolheads you get… a Porsche.
And if you have any doubt, do yourself a favour and walk around a Porsche dealership. Cars aside, their coffee isn’t too shabby either.
At the recent launch we had three derivatives to drive around the Western Cape, including over one or two mountain passes. The fact that it was wet for large parts of the drive only added to our ability to get to grips with the dynamics of the Cayenne.
My first drive was behind the wheel of the Cayenne Turbo, which as the day progressed had me wishing I’d opted for it on the last stretch simply because by that stage we’d become a little more used to the Cayenne’s speed, ability and agility.
Powered by a new 404kw biturbo V8 engine that with the Sport Chrono will get to 100km/h in under four seconds and the speedometer needle stopping at 286km/h, the Cayenne Turbo will have you needing your lawyer’s number on speed dial.
Like its siblings, it’s loaded with technology and luxury and in the Turbo’s case a rear spoiler that moves at various angles depending on your speed to deliver aero stability and, if you’re really giving it horns, acts as an airbrake… remember those engineers?
And they’ve taken the voice command control a little further with what’s called natural language processing (NLP), so let’s say you’re travelling in Lesotho in winter and you tell the system that you’re a little cold – it automatically increases the climate control by two degrees. It’s available across the range.
The roof height has been reduced by 9mm and the wheel diameter increased by an inch, but emphasising that it’s not just a serious sports SUV but remains a solid family vehicle the luggage space has been increased by 100 litres, totalling 770 litres of packing space.
Our second session with the Cayenne was with the S model powered by a newly developed 2.9-litre twin-turbocharged V6 giving up 324kw and 550Nm of torque that will get you to 100km/h in 4.9 seconds and a top speed of 265km/h with the Sport Chrono Package, something that didn’t seem to be too difficult to achieve if we really wanted to.
It really is a delight to drive and, if I had the means, it would be the one I’d opt for. Much of it in no small part due to the four-wheel-steer system fitted across the range that gives a new meaning to direct steering, especially when we hit the passes, and even at twice the recommended speed the Cayenne zipped in and out without breaking a sweat.
But why would you want to go into the bundu with a Porsche? Simply because you can.
With the off-road settings of mud, gravel, sand or rocks, the drive, chassis and differential locks can be selected to adapt to the road you’re travelling. The Cayenne uses the active all-wheel drive, with Porsche traction management distributing the driving force between the axles.
Sure, you’re not going to do extreme trails, and you’ll probably have a toy for that in the garage somewhere, but I can guarantee you it will idle up Sani Pass with the greatest of ease, never mind cruising on the well-kept dirt roads that Namibia has to offer.
Last up came the “base model” Cayenne as we headed back to Cape Town. Even that, and I say “even” within the Porsche parameters, has everything going for it, so you really don’t have to move up a model and sell the family jewels to get yourself behind the wheel of a Cayenne.
It’s fitted with a six-pod three-litre turbo engine that gives you a healthy 250kw and 450Nm of torque and gives you more than enough fun and speed as we found out, having missed a turn and fallen behind the pack.
The new eight-speed Tiptronic S gearbox works almost flawlessly and speeding along we hardly noticed a gear change and, with a long eighth gear, we managed to get just over 13l/100km which, considering it was a launch and no one held back, isn’t bad at all.
As we entered the outskirts of Cape Town we decided that we needed to find something “wrong” with the Cayenne so that it wouldn’t sound like a Porsche promo. Even though there will probably be an updated version in a couple of years, as it stands now you’ll have to drill down pretty hard to find a real fault with the latest Cayenne offering.