MACAN OFFERS NEW BASE MODEL
Porsche’s hot-selling SUV gets a turbo four under the hood to lure new fans
Porsche Canada has forecast that for 2017, the newly introduced four-cylinder base Macan will comprise 40 per cent of all Macan sales. For this smaller, though growing brand, that’s a gauntlettossing boast.
When the Cayenne was introduced in 2002, most figured Porsche was throwing away its famed racing culture to capitalize on the lucrative, if pedestrian, SUV market.
Instead, it managed to build an incredibly well-received, familysize vehicle that looked like someone had blown up a Porsche balloon with a little too much air, yet still allowed the driver to engage with the road while hauling along the family on vacation. It worked, and it continues to work. Cayennes soon made up roughly 50 per cent of Porsche Canada’s bottom line.
The existing six-cylinder Macan S, GTS and Turbo have brought Porsche’s SUV punch to 65 per cent of its sales. The Macan has proven it doesn’t cannibalize sales from the Cayenne, and the four-cylinder is a natural progression to carve out even more numbers in the highly competitive small-SUV arena.
Currently, the Audi Q5 — which shares its basic underpinnings with the Macan — is the segment workhorse, and Porsche might be banking on buyers thinking the Q5 is getting a little long in the tooth.
The new Jaguar F-Pace diesel, the Land Rover Discovery Sport, the BMW X3 and MercedesBenz’s GLC-Class also crowd the field. For perspective, the Q5 year-to-date sales as of July 2016 were 4,575; the Macan’s were 1,335.
The target demographic for this base Macan is fairly pegged as a 52- to 55-year-old woman. She’s got money — likely a household income in the $350,000 range — and is a prestige buyer. Macan buyers list drive experience, build quality and handling as their top goals; those with significantly lighter household incomes usually have safety, reliability and fuel economy in those spots, so anyone hopping into a Macan is likely coming from within the segment.
I am that woman, if we can be flexible on that income range. What would make me consider the base Macan? Or would I? It’s got the handling, it’s got the power and it’s got that fancy badge. I’m hugely underwhelmed by the cargo space; it has nearly 48 per cent less than the Q5. I don’t have playpens and hockey bags to haul around ( by this age, her kids are driving themselves, right?), but I don’t want to be dropping seats just for groceries.
The Macan comes standard with lane-departure warning, park assist and a rear-view camera, a Sport button, 18-inch wheels, eight-way driver’s side electric seat, Porsche’s dualclutch transmission with paddle shifters and three-zone automatic climate control.
But when Porsche acknowledges that its buyers will already be piling another 12 grand in options onto the base, the line of reasoning gets a little murky; that parks a buyer just $4,000 under the base price of a Cayenne — which nobody takes at the base, either. This randy little Macan may get you in the Porsche door, but you’ll be immediately confronted by a steep set of stairs.
The Macan has one of the best visual infotainment screens on the market; they’ve found a way to deliver a crisp, clear image with almost no reflection or glare. Porsche steering wheels are a marriage of art and function, though the double row of buttons under your right arm on the centre console is always cockpit overkill. Even with a laden cargo hold and two adults, the Macan hauls.
It’s doubtful you’re going to be throwing this Porsche around a racetrack, but we did it anyway to make sure the handling hadn’t been muted. A Porsche without that handling isn’t going to sell to buyers who, at a guess, are already in this brand for that reason. Braking is a little soft, which was surprising. Braking a Porsche should feel nearly as good as accelerating one, even if it’s a stylish, entry-level daily driver.
Follow the bouncing ball: The new Macan will be a gateway Porsche. You can get into the brand at $52,700. All that heritage, all the swagger — not bad, right?
But playing apples to apples, the Macan’s biggest rival in the segment is headed up by Audi’s Q5, which starts at $43,800. That’s a big gap, and one that will no doubt be nibbled away at by customers exercising their right to option. Porsche itself knows the Macan buyers will actually be closer to $64,920 when they’ve finished kitting out their fourbanger.
Wait, what? We didn’t need a fraction of the base Macan’s 252 horsepower to blast past that entry point.
The Macan is a logical addition to the Porsche caste, but it won’t deliver the conquest sales that every brand desperately wants and, in this field, needs. The company will be banking on buyers who will be making an emotional commitment to the black horse.