Porsche Cayenne S | Shed of the Week

Bosh! Economy Porsche - anyone feeling lucky?

Depending on your approach to life it’s either shedly Nirvana or a hippo-sized Brave Pill this week in the hulking triple-black shape of this 955 series Porsche Cayenne S. Shed brought you one of these Cayenne Ss just over two years ago. At that time, Jacko of this parish noted in the forum that there was ‘not a huge market for an aged luxury SUV that could **** the bed expensively at any moment and do less than 20mpg’. The rest of the forum was quickly pebbledashed with adjectives from both ends of the descriptive spectrum. The fact that words like ‘fantastic’, ‘horror’, ‘wunderbar’, ’ugly’, ‘perfect’, ’magnifique’, ’terrifying’, ‘hideous’ and ‘tempting’ often appeared alongside each other in the same post demonstrated the irresistible but also potentially ruinous idea of paying less than £2k for an old Porsche. The comment that perhaps summed it up best was the first one on the forum, from Jordie Barretts Sock, which simply said ‘wow, what a gamble’.

Two years on, there’s some interesting news on that Cayenne S shed from 2024 that we’ll reveal a little later. Today’s S, which, like the previous one, was built in September ’03, shows a tantalisingly low mileage of 136,000. That represents an average mileage of fewer than 6,000 a year. It was covering the standard 12k pa in its early years, but the accumulation rate gradually reduced in the 2010s, presumably in line with the rising cost of fuel.

That’s definitely something to be aware of with these V8s. Some say that if you’re determined to buy an old Cayenne you might as well make it a Turbo, because then you do at least get proper 444hp/457lb ft performance in return for the gallon of fuel you’ll be sloshing into the tank every 13 miles. In standard trim, the Turbo gave you a 0-60mph time in the mid-fives, or high-fours with a light 500hp+ remap, qualifying it as the first high-performance SUV. A fighting-fit 4.5 S with its normally aspirated 335hp/310lb V8 and auto gearbox needed seven seconds and change for the 0-60 run.

There was another reason for choosing the Turbo over the S, which was that it didn’t suffer from the cylinder/piston wear that could really spoil an S owner’s day. If you dodged that bullet, the S did have a slightly more acceptable fuel consumption figure of 18mpg. The base Cayenne with its N/A 245hp/229lb ft 3.2 six-cylinder petrol weighed nearly as much as the V8 at about 2.3 tonnes. No amount of flogging would get that car to cover the 0-60 in under nine seconds. On the plus side, it was exempt from the bore-score curse.

The Cayenne S we featured in ’24 was wittily described by the vendor as having an auto-closing tailgate due to broken struts, a common 955 issue usually left well alone because fitting new struts required some messing around with the headlining, and that never goes well. Window regulators do go on Cayennes, but it’s not easy to think of many other German cars where that isn’t the case. Great air con though and a reasonably comfy, Porsche-classy cabin too despite the less than mega-supportive seats. There was no 7-seat option: they were all 5-seaters. These old Cayennes are surprisingly useful off-road and therefore arguably better all-rounders than more recent models.

Looking through the MOT history of today’s black S, it would appear at first sight anyway that a lot of problems reported in the October ’23 MOT fail at 117,000 miles were put right, as those items didn’t reappear in the ’24 test. Oddly though, the corroded front and rear subframes that had popped up in the ‘23 test then reappeared in the August ’25 test, which is the most recent one. Shed is going to give it the benefit of the doubt and assume that these were different subframes. Whatever they were, they could have been fixed since then, along with the non-excessive oil leak. We don’t know.

There may be nothing to fear. We started this story by quoting the ‘what a gamble’ post about the Cayenne S that was featured here in April ‘24. In fact, it looks like that car wasn’t such a gamble because it has passed two more MOTs since then. The first one was advisory-free and the second one (last November at 138,000 miles) generated just one note for a worn rear tyre.

Will today’s 136,000-miler fare as well? Who here is willing to risk £1,990 or less to find out? Whoever it is, they won’t have to wait long to uncover any awful truths as the next MOT test is due in August. What’s the worst that can happen? What Shed said in 2024 is still true today, i.e. that at these prices they’re losing a lot less money than Taycans. There’s good news on tax too, because a 2003 Cayenne falls into Band K With An Asterisk, so the annual VED is ‘only’ (ha) £445.

Maybe Shed himself will take the plunge on this Cayenne if it’s not sold by the weekend. Having owned a few automatics in his time he is old enough to appreciate the romantic advantages of one-handed driving. He bought an auto 928 a while back. The postmistress had been hinting about spicing up their relationship and to that end she was leaving Ann Summers and Lovehoney catalogues lying around in Shed’s workshop. You can imagine her excitement when Shed announced that he was going to show her his Tiptronic. It took all of her willpower to suppress the disappointment when Shed’s misfiring 928 spluttered into view.

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Martin 480 Turbo

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