Porsche Cayenne S

New ‘surface coated’ brakes impress on both track and road

IF THERE’S ANY BENEFIT TO WAR it’s that it forces creativity and innovation, and technology moves ahead in leaps. The battle to make SUVS ever more capable is no different: we’ve seen fourwheel steering, active aero, electronic diffs, variable anti-roll bars, torque-vectoring and launch control all appear on 4x4s, tweaked, reengineered and cajoled to help the vehicle they are fitted to defy physics as much as possible.

Porsche has now brought a new technology to the fight – Porsche Surface Coated Brake (PSCB). At face value PSCB looks just like conventional vented cast-iron discs with ten-piston front and four-piston rear calipers. But where they differ is that the braking surface of the discs has had a tungsten and carbon compound fired onto it under high temperature and pressure. This 100-micronthick layer is much harder than uncoated cast-iron, meaning 90 per cent less brake dust is produced and a more consistent response is achieved as temperatures rise. In fact, Porsche says it has found the brakes withstand heat almost as well as its carbon-ceramics.

PSCB is standard on the new Cayenne Turbo and an option on the £68,330, 434bhp Cayenne S, where they cost £2105 – or a third of the price of carbon-ceramics. Even after repeated 100mph-to-zero stops of the 2020kg car on track the brakes resisted fade well, with no sign of pedal travel increasing. Crucially, they feel perfectly normal on the road, too.

Impressive stuff. But now we’d really like to try them on one of Porsche’s sports cars.