Driven: Porsche Cayenne Turbo

Fattest Porker sheds 185kgs and gets a facelift - what's not to like?

New Turbo looks menacing in black

When the Prius was the only hybrid in town, I quite liked it. More for it's gadgetry than its performance, although it did make a surprisingly refined and comfortable little cruiser and probably still does.

The rear view is improved, too

Now everyone's at it and the novelty is wearing a bit thin, but even so I was disappointed not to be moved by the new Porsche Cayenne hybrid. As a luxury SUV with purported green credentials it's a solid (no, make that vigorous) performer, and will sell like hot cakes to company directors with Corporate Social Responsibility PR agendas and badge-conscious school-running 'yummy mummies'. And it's a Porsche, so of course it feels quick and handles tautly for a two-and-a-bit ton leviathan. But the flies in the ointment are a blown 3.0 Audi V6 petrol engine that sounds a little over-strained when harried, quite a lot of indistinct 'white noises' at higher (than allowed in the UK) motorway speeds and... well, to put it crudely, a lack of anything much likely to give performance car fans wood. Each to their own though, and for a more traditional audience Porsche has evolved the new Cayenne Turbo. The little blue pills can stay in the jar...

Still stonkingly fast through the twisties as well as away from the traffic lights, the latest Turbo benefits just as much as the new hybrid and diesel models from a series of improvements designed to keep the Cayenne at the head of the luxury SUV pack. These include a new 8-speed Tiptronic S auto box, torque-vectoring and tweaks to the 4x4 and stability systems, revised steering and a 185kg fat reduction plan.

The new model looks nicer as well (surely?) inside and out, to the point of having morphed into something altogether attractive. Or perhaps familiarity has made the porky Porsche concept easier to swallow. Either way, I didn't feel as much of a pariah as I expected to on the roads around Goodwood at the UK media launch of the full Cayenne range this week, even though the Turbo's 4.8-litre 500hp twin turbocharged V8 made it disarmingly easy to offend the genteel motorists of West Sussex. (Sorry to the grey-haired lady in the Honda Civic if you're reading this. But of course you won't be... chortle, smirk, etc.)

It's a fact that you'll be hard-pressed to drive a Cayenne Turbo without acting the road-hog, there's just too much fun to be had. Floor the throttle in any of its 8 gears (and with so many to call on it's rare that you'll know which one you're actually using) and the car leaps towards the horizon like a thing possessed. Stick it in sport mode for a bit of extra throttle response (why not, eh?) and the magnificent combination of limpet-like grip, extreme grunt and (crucially) a visually advantageous driving position mean you'll be picking-off grannies in their Jap-boxes on your favourite B-road while the so-called hot-hatch merchants are forced to fume and curse in 'Nana's wake. Yes, you will, because you won't be able to help yourself.

If you think that all sounds a bit juvenile you're right, which is probably why Porsche offered us the Goodwood circuit instead of local B-roads to better get to grips with the Cayenne Turbo's cartoon-land capabilities.

Suffice to say that the widely reported 'shock and awe' aspect of the original model's performance on the track is undiminished, and actively enhanced by a 'pointier' front end with steering upgrades and the newly available torque vectoring option that helps the car dig-in around medium and low (relatively) speed corners.

The Cayenne Turbo also gets air-sprung suspension as standard, and with active suspension management also included and optional Dynamic Chassis Control (active anti-roll stabilisers) it's hard to imagine a system that would deal more effectively with the loads imposed when hurling this 2170kg monster down the road. On the smooth, flowing Goodwood tarmac it always felt neat and composed, while out on the Sussex B-roads the ride offers a luxurious suppleness too. Regular Turbos get iron brake discs, but if you want to push the boat out a set of ceramic discs will set you back almost £6k. Perhaps that's an unnecessary luxury for road use, but they were brilliant at the track offering greatly improved response and precision (what do you mean, nobody would ever track a Cayenne..?) and I'd tick the box if my accountant thought I could afford it.

Talking of boxes, the new Cayenne Turbo ticks a lot of them. It's prestigious, supremely fast, and indecently good fun while offering the sort of practicality that most performance cars could never even dream of. Oh, and Porsche says that thanks mainly to the new 'box and weight savings, fuel consumption is 23 percent better than the old version at 24.6mpg combined. So go on, treat yourself, and help save the planet.

Cayenne Range Overview
The new generation Cayenne is priced as follows:

Cayenne £41,404
Cayenne Diesel £44,178
Cayenne S £53,693
Cayenne S Hybrid £57,610
Cayenne Turbo £81,589

Technical Summary


	Power	Torque	0-62mph	Top speed	Combined mpg	CO2 g/km
Cayenne	300hp	400Nm	7.8secs	143mph	28.5mpg	236
3.6-litre V6 petrol
Active all-wheel drive
Cayenne	240hp	550Nm	7.8secs	135mph	38.2mpg	195
3.0-litre V6 Diesel
Permanent 4x4
CayenneS	400hp	500Nm	5.9secs	160mph	26.9mpg	245
4.8-litre V8 petrol
Active all-wheel drive
CayenneS Hybrid	380hp	580Nm	6.5secs	150mph	34.4mpg	193
3.0-litre V6 supercharged petrol	333hp	440Nm
& electric motor	47hp	300Nm
Permanent 4x4
CayenneTurbo	500hp	700Nm	4.7secs	172mph	24.6mpg	270
4.8-litre V8 petrol
Active all-wheel drive

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adycav

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