The Cayenne has always been a thorn in some peoples side when it comes to Porsche and what they build. Purists refuse to accept the Cayenne. It’s too big, too heavy, too ugly and has 3 too many doors. A Porsche should be lightweight, 2 door (you might argue 3 doors in the case of the Cayman), rear engined and ideally air cooled although that went out of the window nearly 20 years ago now. I love a purist Porsche be it a factory built race car, the road going variant or a lightweight Boxster Spyder. But the fact is sometimes you need to shift a load of people, their luggage, some shopping and other stuff essential to our enjoyment of life. Yes, it’s amazing what you can fit into a carefully packed 911 but the Cayenne makes it easy. No longer do you have to seek out underpant sized compartments or purchase shoes based on how easily they fit inside a glovebox. Touring Europe in a 3.2 Carrera was interesting when it came to borders and hotel arrivals, it took a few minutes for the car to give up it’s contents. Rear passengers of grown up size don’t need skeletal manipulation after a fuel tanks worth of motoring and dare I say it you don’t actually have to forfeit the Porsche sports car experience. We got our first Cayenne way back in 2003, a Cayenne S and it did us proud for 3 years during which time we used it for everything from towing cars to familiarisation laps around Europe’s race circuits. When it went it left a big hole. A few years ago we took in a Turbo S Cayenne and that seemed a natural choice of car to keep. People and luggage collected from airports and train stations, long drives out to look at cars for sale, bits and pieces to move around the country and when you turned up somewhere you don’t look a fool. Importantly the road manners were impeccable, you didn’t roll around like a water filled balloon in a bucket and it was bloody quick. If you needed to sneak past someone on a country lane you did it quickly and with confidence. Long motorway journeys melted away and B road diversions were swiftly dispatched. All the buttons were there, air suspension, a good sound system, electric motors for everything - even a little camera to make you look like a parking god. On the looks front I probably can’t comment. You know how you own kids always look beautiful but there are plenty of other people with ugly offspring, well the Cayenne is a bit the same. Once you realise what a great bit of kit it is you subconsciously reflect that in what you see with your eyes. From some angles it actually looks attractive. I was once recovering a car where things hadn’t gone quite to plan on the finance front and in all the activity I remember looking at the Cayenne and thinking wow, what a great looking car. I don’t even see it as being particularly huge. The Range Rover which many champion as the daddy is bulkier, rolls around like a fat bird on the waltzer and only remains upright because of clever electronics. The Cayenne is fundamentally a great chassis. As for the off road capabilities I challenge anyone to drive the adverse terrain course at the Silverstone experience centre and tell me the Cayenne isn’t breathtaking. The chap in the land rover who needed recovering from the slipway and then his rib hauling out by our Cayenne would also vouch for it’s abilities. Of course the real test is does anyone buy them? In 2012 Porsche sold 3 times more Cayennes than 911s worldwide and 12,500 more Cayennes than Boxster, Cayman, 911 and Panamera combined. So that would be a yes. It is with great sadness that we bid a fond farewell to our Cayenne Turbo S, in it’s place we’re giving the Cayenne GTS a whirl.
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 11:23:25 +0000
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