Porsche Cayenne
Bigger! Faster! Dumber! The new Cayenne expends astonishing
prowess on giving 'sport' performance

Having driven the revised Porsche Cayenne, Mark Hales is impressed by the technology but not the mission

Earlier this year, BMW introduced an updated and facelifted X5, claiming this heavy, relatively tall vehicle was now even
more sporting with new suspension and, especially, a set of computer-controlled hydraulic anti-roll bars that only resist the
body when it tries to roll, leaving it free when the car isn't cornering. There is a staggering amount of extra technology to go
with this, all linked by a missile-level communication system that links shocks to roll bars to suspension to brakes to steering
to transmission to, probably, your mobile phone. And of course it is faster, stiffer and more aerodynamic, and burns less fuel,
while offering seven seats instead of five. All this, said BMW, was to make it more sporting so you could lap the Nürburgring
faster when you weren't travelling off road. Of course you could.

The Porsche Cayenne hasn't been around for as long as the X5 - four years instead of seven - but it, too, has been a huge
success; to date 150,371 have been sold. The vehicles are similar in concept: tall, heavy 4x4s that their makers have tried
to turn into sports cars. The Porsche is even bigger than the X5, and more than 100kg heavier, despite only offering five seats,
and it's the Cayenne's chunky appearance that seems to have attracted most adverse comment, rather than the more dubious
mission of turning a three-ton behemoth into a Nürburgring warrior.

To be fair, Porsche has always been slightly more honest than some about the Cayenne's mission, even if some of its engineers
admit privately that they didn't really want to do it. The Cayenne might be lumpen, but they have made sure it's fast, and they
haven't even bothered to borrow a diesel from Audi to try to make it economical.

The Mk2 Cayenne's mechanical changes are also similar to the new X5's. There are revised engines, featuring direct fuel
injection for the first time, and new hydraulically actuated active anti-roll bars and electrically adjustable dampers.

These are linked to the same computers, along with new electronic stability and traction controls, and the management of
the all-wheel-drive transmission, which can send anything between nothing and all of the engine's torque to the front or the
rear wheels, depending on which end is best able to utilise it. It also features a low ratio for off-road use - just like your old
Land Rover - and locks for the central and (optional) rear differential. These are options not available on the X5;
BMW claims that its system makes them unnecessary.
Either that or it's a tacit admission that the X5 is never seriously going off road.

The Cayenne's lightly restyled body features bigger wheelarches to cover the option of even bigger wheels - the Turbo is
now available with truck-sized mags of 21in diameter and 10in width - plus new lights that follow your intended path and
new air intakes for more economical but larger, more powerful engines. The top-of-the-range twin-turbo V8 now has more
power (500bhp) than the company's most muscular 911 and is capable of 171mph, 5mph faster than its predecessor.
Such things are important. The Nürburgring's straight is long.

The new engines are perhaps technically more significant than they appear. The Audi-derived V6 has grown from 3.2 to 3.6
litres and the Porsche-only V8 models (with or without turbos) have gone up from 4.5 to 4.8 litres, but all of them now feature
direct fuel injection. Although introduced by Mitsubishi several years ago, this is still comparatively rare in petrol engines,
now made more commercially viable by improvements in electronic control. It gives the engineers more options to tinker
with various parameters and, by more carefully metering the amount of fuel and directing it more accurately in the
combustion cycle, improvements in emissions and fuel economy are possible.

A 15 per cent improvement in economy might seem a drop in the oilfield when the car burns a gallon every 12.5 miles,
but that would be to ignore the sheer amount of engineering effort required to achieve it, and everything else. Whether it is
all relevant is another matter, but when you list it - on 50-plus pages of A4 press notes - it almost makes the 3.6-litre base
model's purchase price of C$75,000 sound like a bargain. Mk2 status has inflated prices by only five per cent, but as always
you have to take careful note of what is on the options list; the new engines are standard fit, but some of the suspension additions
are not and can greatly inflate the final price tag - which is also true of the BMW.

Some options (like Stability Management) are standard on the Turbo, which now wears a substantial base price tag of $C140,000,
although Porsche points out that this is less than the old Turbo S.

Is it worth the extra? Unlike BMW, Porsche provided some Mk2 Cayennes without the suspension options and, on a hotel car-park
slalom, the roll bars definitely reduced the body's roll. No doubt, either, that at the factory test facility the active cars will have been
faster in tests. But, at the risk of sounding ungrateful, the active control also reduces the familiar feeling of response to the steering
and, in something so big, this does tend to make the driver feel more remote from the driving process.

On the public roads it's less noticeable and perversely the V6 model, which is lighter and has smaller wheels and tyres, was more
involving. That is often the case, and it's back to the mass and mission equation again. On the other hand, restraint of large masses
has to be a safety benefit, even if it doesn't make a sports car. You can see how it would make a coach safer.

We did attempt to sample the Cayenne's off-road capability but recent rain in Spain had made the clay surface sticky, which filled
the grooves in the high-performance tyres and turned them to slicks, a benefit which even Porsche Direct Chassis Control (PDCC)
and the rest of the technology was unable to utilise. To be fair (again) this is nothing any of the breed could have coped with
- unless they were fitted with the correct tyres. These are an option (and winter ones are mandatory anyway in Germany) but mean
you can't do 150mph at the Nürburgring. It's a choice you have to make and, since ours had been made, it was back to straight-road
blasting, where there is no doubt that the fastest Cayenne is fantastically impressive.

Suspend any cynicism for a moment and experience the sheer excitement of the Porsche's progress. The turbo model launches
towards the horizon with utter contempt for any off-road baggage and the sheer, ludicrous delight of watching the needle sweep
past 180mph from such a high vantage point is deliciously illicit. Apart from the V8 rattle up front and a hiss from the mirrors on
each side, it's surprisingly quiet, too.

And that, I suppose, is the point. The Cayenne can never be a real sports car but, even if speed was never lacking in the previous
model, it is now faster and probably safer, and still rides quite well for something so heavy. That you have more sense of the thing's
size than its weight is a compliment to the systems on which Porsche has spent so much engineering time and effort. It is all undeniably impressive, and for the moment (and until the Audi Q7 V12 diesel makes its appearance) the Cayenne Turbo is still by far the fastest
of a bastard breed. If you are minded to make a politically incorrect statement, you might as well make a really big one…