Porsche Cayenne GTS Coupé Tiptronic S
Porsche engineers rarely perform U-turns. Except in this instance, where they’ve abandoned downsizing and put all their hairpin-turn know-how into the Cayenne GTS
Price: R1 839 000 Engine: 4,0-litre, V8, twinturbo-petrol Transmission: 8-speed automatic Power: 338 kw @ 6 000 r/min Torque: 620 N.m @ 1 800-4 500 r/min 0-100 km/h: 4,5 seconds* Top speed: 270 km/h* Fuel consumption: 11,20 L/100 km* CO2: 255 g/km* Rivals: Aston Martin DBX; BMW X6 M Competition; Lamborghini Urus; Mercedes-amg GLC63 S Coupé
Ibet you already know what we’re going to say about the Porsche Cayenne GTS Coupé … that although it is far from the best-looking or most sensible vehicle ever made, it is still a Porsche: immaculately built, brimming with top-flight engineering and so good to drive it will make your eyes water. Yes, it is all of those things. Guilty as charged, CAR readers.
When Porsche launched the original Cayenne back in 2002 – its first crack at a rough-and-tumble, go-anywhere SUV – the firm made no bones about the fact it was aimed squarely at existing Porsche 911 Carrera owners in the hope they would “keep it in the family” and opt for a Cayenne when it came time to purchase the next family carrier. Forgiving Porsche’s rather misguided and tenuous link to draw a parallel between a freshly minted family SUV and the legendary 959 rally car to give it sporting pedigree, you couldn’t argue against the Cayenne’s prowess, nor how successful the nameplate would ultimately become. Nearly two
decades on and Porsche’s brave step into Suv-dom has steered the firm clear of bankruptcy, tapped a host of new markets and delivered more than one million Cayenne sales.
Call it market expansion or simply keeping up with the competition but every step of the Cayenne journey has presented a GTS model, a derivative that has straddled the line between the Cayenne S and the full-fat Turbo.
In 2007, the GTS, armed with an atmospheric V8, was good for 298 kw and a 0-100 km/h sprint time of 6,1 seconds. In 2012, that was up to 309 kw and the acceleration time was 5,7 seconds. In 2014, taking the turbocharged downsizing route with a boosted V6, 324 kw and 5,1 seconds from standstill to 100 km/h was the result. Today’s GTS utilises the Volkswagen Group’s 4,0-litre twinturbo-petrol V8 and is good for 338 kw and a 718 Caymanbeating 0-100 km/h sprint time of 4,5 seconds (when optioned with
Porsche’s Sports Chrono pack, of course). In so doing, Porsche’s engineers have behaved completely out of character and performed a rare U-turn, abandoning the downsizing deadend. Wunderbar!
In 2019, a Cayenne Coupé with a rakish roofline debuted at the 2019 Shanghai Auto Show. Beauty, as we know, is in the eye of the beholder and we have long had our doubts about this phenomenon of so-called sports SUVS. However, up close in the metal, the GTS Coupé does look the part. Standard-fit Porsche Active Suspension Management (PASM) lowers the vehicle by 20 mm, the chassis has been widened by 18 mm for an improved stance with flared wheel arches to match the footprint (1 983 mm wide in total) and it boasts a roofline 20 mm lower than that of your gardenvariety Cayenne. Although, you’ll likely pull the GTS out of a line-up thanks to signature black badges, trim accents and 21-inch RS Spyder wheels (22-inch items of various designs are optionally available). Our test unit wore fetching Carmine Red paint at an additional R54 390.
The cocooning cabin boasts top-notch bespoke sports seats and, in the E3 Cayenne, Porsche has ditched the old architecture – once machine-gunned with hard buttons all along the transmission tunnel – in favour of the latest large touchscreen arrangement with haptic feedback, complemented by a highly configurable digital instrument cluster. The screen up top handles infotainment and navigation, while climate control and other convenience functions are controlled by a series of logical “buttons” below. As previously mentioned, the touchscreenbased system in Volkswagen Group products is pleasing to look at but is not the most userfriendly on the move when you momentarily take your eye off the road to execute any button touches. Ride over a bump at the wrong moment and you may find yourself mired in a confusing submenu, searching for the back button to the home page before the process starts all over again.
Similarly, the touchscreenbased system doesn’t allow multiple tasks at the same time. For example, when you’re travelling at parking lot speeds and the park-distance cameras are active, you cannot change a music track or operate other convenience features without first switching off the display. We’re not singling out the Cayenne, merely making a point about all of them. Fiddly buttons aside, there is generous seating for four or five adults and individual rear pews can be replaced with rear benchseating. Boot capacity of 772 litres grows to 1 708 litres with the second row of seats folded flat, which is impressive practicality considering the crossover’s sporty sloped rear silhouette.
Dynamically, the GTS is streaks ahead of its predecessor, a regular Cayenne and the competition. Courtesy of Porsche’s best hairpin-crushing know-how like latest-generation torque vectoring (PTV Plus) and optional Porsche Dynamic Chassis Control (PDCC), electromechanical roll stabilisation and rear-axle steering, it genuinely does boast the agility and spontaneity of a sportscar. Forget about this being a Porsche 911 Carrera owner’s second car, this is very nearly as fast and offers decent ground clearance and a heightened driving position.
Beyond the physics-defying witchcraft, the key to the GTS’S appeal is ultra-quick, completely uncorrupted steering. Based on the driving mode selected and your inputs at the helm, the fourwheel-drive system defaults to rear-wheel drive until slippage is detected and power is shuffled around by Porsche Traction Management (PTM) electronics. Whether in slow corners or highspeed sweeps, the Cayenne GTS Coupé is an absolute weapon.
So, there you have it, fusing the speed and agility of a sportscar with the everyday usability and practicality of a Cayenne SUV, as only the Germans can. The sensible types among you will argue a regular Cayenne GTS delivers all the speed of the coupé for R90 000 less.
Yet, for the extroverts out there, the GTS Coupé is fractionally more engaging to drive and ups the ante visually as it has always done. In this instance, you can have it all.