Devouring dust roads in a Porsche Cayenne S Coupe
The sporty SUV is an unexpected pleasure off the tar, writes Alexander Parker
High up on this list of things we didn’t realise we needed was the SUV coupe, pioneered by BMW, with the X6 and copied endlessly ever since.
Taking an SUV, reducing its off-road ability and limiting its boot space at the cost of not universally loved aesthetic improvements seemed to many seasoned observers to be a fool’s errand.
However, motor writers sometimes forget that people don’t buy cars rationally. Sales grew and the idea flourished, and so today we find ourselves faced with the Cayenne S Coupe, an SUV coupe from the most unrelentingly focused of the German luxury manufacturers, Porsche.
The Cayenne Coupe is a Cayenne with a more sporting shape, and it works better in the flesh than it does on paper. In fact, the swoopier look is arguably a better fit for the Cayenne S’s sporting purpose.
Out test was to examine in more detail the family SUV capabilities of a car dismissed in some quarters as school-run bling for the activewear moms, and to see whether this new Cayenne — coupe of not — could handle a weekend break in the Cedarberg and a long stint on a gravel road of mixed quality.
The new Cayenne is a facelifted version of the existing third-generation model, but it has undergone significant midlife changes that make it seem more of an all-new car. Critically, the Cayenne S is now once again equipped with a V8, a familiar four-litre that brings the right heft and thrust to a sporting SUV, not to mention the inimitable eight-cylinder burble.
The car’s exterior has been redesigned, with matrix headlights centring a new, more aggressive and planted appearance. Inside, more buttons have been removed in favour of an excellent touchscreen interface and — with the gear shifter now on the dashboard, space in the console has been freed up for wireless phone charging and cup holders.
Getting a family of five in for the weekend (including a toddler in a chunky rear-facing seat) was a squeeze, and the reduced boot space courtesy of those svelte lines meant stacking suitcases was not possible, but we did get them in at a push.
Loaded up, the big V8 SUV was in its element on the N7 out of Cape Town. With 349kW and 600Nm underfoot overtaking was an exercise in simplicity, and the long road was more of an exercise in restraint behind the wheel of a car designed to devour autobahns as much as African freeways. The car cruises quietly and comfortably, and its 0-100km/h sprint time of a shade over 4.6 seconds means little will bother you at the lights.
After a weekend in the chalets in Algeria campsite, we were faced with a simple decision. Turn right for the N7 and a three-hour blast back to Cape Town, or turn left for the long gravel road to Ceres via Sanddrif, Matjiesrivier and Mount Cedar, which would take us the bulk of the day and test this city
THE CAR’S SUPERB BALANCE, POWER, BRAKES AND WEIGHT DISTRIBUTION MAKE FOR SURPRISINGLY SWIFT AND SAFE PASSAGE
slicker ’ s gravel road skills.
Considering the standard 20-inch rims I did pause for thought, but we turned left and hoofed it.
The result was nothing if not astonishing. Those 20-inch wheels have plenty of rubber wrapped around them. Excuse some brief tyre nerdery, but it ’ s important: up front the 285/40/21 rubber makes for great front-end grip and compliance on harsh roads. At the back, monster 315/35/21s ensure vast traction.
Together with the fettled suspension on the new car, you have a combination of comfort and gravel road pointability that at times beggars belief.
It wasn’t merely passable for an autobahn bully out of its comfort zone, it was by some measure one of the most comfortable SUVs I have ever driven on gravel, no doubt due to its incredibly stiff monocoque construction and expensive lightweight engineering on the suspension and unsprung components.
On several occasions I was frustrated by the slow pace of old-school ladder-frame SUVs that were, in theory at least, in their element.
In a low-grip environment, the car’s superb balance, power, brakes and weight distribution make for surprisingly swift and safe passage on roads more used to seeing bakkies and their booted counterparts.
You can quickly get used to other nice-to-haves, such as the new advanced air filtering system that keeps dust and smells out of the cabin, even in a highdust environment.
It’s not a cheap car to run —I averaged 12l/100km on our excursion — and it’s not cheap to buy either, coming in at R2.2m, meaning that, presumably, fuel bills will not bother the average owner.
Expensive as it is, the Cayenne S Coupe outguns in power and undercuts in price by notable margins its obvious Mercedes-AMG competitor, the GLE53 Coupe, but is beaten on both price and power by the BMW X6 M60i, meaning a comparison on drivability in the life you live, ownability and brand would need to be made by the prospective buyer.
A car with this breadth of skills is a truly scarce thing, though. I’d take a standard Cayenne S and enjoy the boot space, but whether you opt for the coupe or the standard SUV, the new Cayenne S is a spectacular SUV in all likely family-use scenarios — for the school run, the freeway and, indeed, the dusty back roads of the Cedarberg.
That makes it, I think, almost unique.