When Porsche launched the Macan, it shipped off every reporter it could find to Norther Africa, where they experienced the joys of driving a car that's both Cayenne and Cayman in one very attractive package. Everybody quickly forgot about their misgivings and returned to the civilized world with one conclusion: "it's nothing like the Audi Q5."
Very few people had something bad to say about it, except maybe that it behaved badly in the famous Scandinavian moose test. CNET's test drive reporter Brian Cooley bucks that trend today, balancing the good with the bad in a non-glamorized report that covers some of the flaws built into the German SUV.
The biggest niggle Cooley had was that the infotainment system was complicated to use. He calls it "death by a thousand cuts", describing the many things wrong with Porsche's way of doing things. There's the fact that it doesn't have live searches like Audi and that voice commands only work according to the screen you're in. So if you want navigation and you're in the radio screen, it's not going to happen.
Porsche interior design philosophy is that every major function needs to have its own dedicated button. This saves you the trouble of having to surf through the menus, but also results in huge clutter, an ergonomic disaster of sorts.
On paper, having a separate button for "Sport" and "Sport Plus" driving modes is good. But in reality, it's like having a special key on your keyboard for "oo" just because it's used in common words like food, good and school.
Current Porsche owners will not have a problem, but the Macan is a brand ambassador and most of its buyers are first-timers, so an interior that requires the memory of an elephant could prove problematic.
Between that and the fact that Porsche asks you to pay extra for equipment everybody needs, the Macan reveals that it's a sportscar that doubles as a family vehicle and not the other way around. And even though they've been beaten in dynamic comparisons, the BMW X3 and Audi Q5 are still valid buying choices. Because, let's face it, nobody actually needs a 400 horsepower "Porsche crossover".
Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida. Full profile
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