Porsche Cayenne Turbo S: Tale of a rad road trip
Grand traveling vehicle combines sports car specifications with SUV looks
Ihad to do some traveling over the winter holiday break. So I arranged for a test vehicle. For a quick four-day turnaround to the San Francisco Bay Area and back, I chose the Porsche Cayenne Turbo S. The Cayenne is a grand traveling vehicle that combines sports car specifications with sport utility vehicle looks.
Undeniably a Porsche, it’s powered by a 4.8-liter twin turbocharged gasoline engine that makes a burly 570 horsepower and 590 pound-feet of torque.
That power is delivered to the ground via an eight-speed automatic transmission, which can be manipulated with Porsche’s superb paddle shift gear selectors, and stays anchored to the asphalt with Porsche’s “active all-wheel drive.”
The engine gurgles happily in Normal mode and really clears its throat in Sport and Sport Plus. The driver may notice heads turning on the street. The Cayenne Turbo S, when in Sport Plus and fitted with the $3,200 sport exhaust system upgrade, rumbles like a race car.
But it’s an SUV.
Despite the all-wheel drive, the variable suspension settings and the very responsive engine, the Cayenne sits high and wide and drives more like a small truck than a large car.
Around town, the car never felt nimble. It never drove or handled lighter than its weight. As a shortterm operator, I was a little baffled by the ample array of buttons, dials and switches on the center console, which looked lifted from an F-14 Tomcat.
And despite a full week with the car, and 20 minutes in the owner’s manual, I never did figure out how to get the backup camera image to appear on the infotainment screen.
Luckily, most of my time in this Cayenne was time on the road. At highway speeds, I found it extremely effective. Solid and authoritative, it delivered substantial long-distance luxury.
The sports seats were still comfortable at the end of a six-hour drive, though a full-figured operator might find them too snug. The combination of good sound-deadening materials and a great sound system made the Cayenne quiet even at higher speeds.
And there were some higher speeds. The Cayenne is so stately
on the open road that excess was unavoidable. I found myself in violation of the law, by accident, several times.
At one point I asked my traveling companion to guess how fast we were going without looking at the dashboard. She guessed 60 mph.
The speedometer said 85.
Also assisting in the long-haul department is the massive 26.4-gallon tank. This made it possible for me to do something I’ve never once done in any automobile. Refilling the Cayenne after several hundred miles of driving, I spent exactly $100 for a single tank of gas.
Perhaps folks who can afford the suggested retail price on this vehicle don’t worry about such matters, but it certainly caught my attention.