PORSCHE Cayenne Review

Few people know this, but Porsche has been making all-wheel drive vehicles for more than a hundred years now. Sure, there was no such thing as a "Porsche" brand of cars a century ago, but there was a certain Ferdinand Porsche, who among other things was named as the automotive engineer of the century and the father of the modern Porsche sports car brand. He was also designing all-wheel drive hybrid and 100% electric cars before the twentieth century had arrived.

Even fewer people know that, originally, instead of being designed to be built on the same platform that's underpinning the Volkswagen Touareg and the Audi Q7, the Porsche Cayenne was to become just a sportier version of the world's first premium SUV, the Mercedes-Benz M-Klasse. Since at the time when Porsche was considering an SUV of its own Mercedes was busy buying into the AMG brand, the deal to build the Cayenne on the same platform as the ML fell.

Porsche immediately took out their war-hatchets and went to Volkswagen with their plans, so the Touareg/Q7/Cayenne trinity of premium SUVs was born. Although it wouldn't be fair to consider the Cayenne just a 1/3 part of the aforementioned trio, it does share most of its components with the other two cars.

What it didn't share with them at all in the beginning were its engines, which were all but one made exclusively by Porsche. The 3.6-liter gasoline V6 was the only powerplant borrowed from the VAG group to power the Cayenne, while all the other had nothing but "Porsche" stamped on them. Then 2007 came and with it brought quite a large modification to the whole Cayenne range, including plans for a hybrid (kind of late, huh?) and the world's first diesel Porsche engine. Or is it?

Well, not quite, if you take into account the number of Porsche diesel tractors they have been making for years. Also, it's not even made my Porsche, since the three-liter oil-burner under our test car's hood is actually designed and built by Audi.

Some people already consider the Cayenne a blasphemy in the Porsche model range, but what about a diesel Cayenne, does that count as double-blasphemy? Well, we took one to the test and you can read on to see what we came up with as conclusions.

The 2007 facelift-ed Cayenne won’t seem strikingly different to the casual observer at first look, but Porsche has moved the 911 996-looking headlamps farther outboard in the fenders and canted their now-clear covers at a more rakish angle to emulate the never-completely-changed-but all-so-very-new 911 997-exterior appearance. As a personal opinion, the new headlamps make it look more “sea-ready” now, almost like it's about to hit the waves.

Looking at it from the side, the wheel openings have been reshaped. On the whole, the front-end design is a bit more aggressive with three large sewer-grate-looking grilles only kept for the Cayenne Turbo (the lesser-equipped models like our Diesel look a little bit more differentiated between them in the front), and there are minor design tweaks to the mirrors, the roof spoiler and the stoplights with integrated LEDs.

If the critics are "meh", at least the wind tunnel is happy with the results: according to Porsche, the drag coefficient for the eight-cylinder versions has been dropped considerably. From close to 0.40 to approximately 0.35. Talk about design efficiency.

The all-new-for-2008 aluminum wheels with ten spokes do a stupendous job at showing off the Turbo’s red hot chili pepper brake calipers. We obviously had nothing to show, since the Diesel comes standard with 18-inch wheels. Not that those are too small or anything, but on a juggernaut as large as the Cayenne they look a bit petite.

The white color chosen for our test model wasn't the best choice to hide its humongous size either, making it look like a beached albino whale from certain angles. On the whole, we would call the Cayenne facelift a much better-looking car than the 2002 version. Of course, this is like saying that regular flu is a much better disease than swine flu...

All the interior changes for the facelift do add up to a spicier blend of Cayenne, especially on the MY 2009. The never-will-be-changed standard of the “start the engine with your left hand” is of course still there, like in any other Porsche. For the ones who don't yet know, the left-hand-starting-key feature is a throwback to the beginnings of the 24 Hours of LeMans, where the racing driver’s right hand was always busy nudging the shifter into first gear after jumping into the car following a short sprint.

The dials in pretty Porsche-like attractiveness have an overlapping design and succinctly show critical information on the dashboard. The tachometer runs up to a highly-optimistic 6,000 rpm, while the speedometer has a maximum reading of an equally non-achievable 270 km/h (168 mph).

The steering wheel still has three spokes and offers shift buttons for the 6-speed automatic "Tiptronic" transmission, but the extra eight buttons or so to handle some of the improved multimedia functions were missing from our test car, since it was a lower-equipped level. The navigation screen on the center console area is swallowed by almost three dozen small buttons: Porsche did not subscribe to the iDrive, Comand or even the MMI school-of-knob controllers, although it is pretty much the same car as an Audi Q7 in some areas.

Drivers can choose from no less than three damping modes for the pneumatic suspension and there’s also a very welcomed extra “Sport” button, which provides altering to transmission shifting, the firmness of the damping system, the ride height... and how fast the stability management control intervenes when you're starting to get crazy behind the wheel.

The leather trimming upholstery on the seats, dash and door-panel surfaces is a more than welcomed addition and all the seams are as straight as a German engineer's smile. Matte-finished silver accents are another elegant and non-kitschy touch.

The pedals are trimmed in polished metal, which adds to the sporty feeling. The really odd touch is a pair of grab handles adjacent to the center console, which serve no real function unless you're driving like a madman and the left-passenger has run out of breath. The 540 liters (19.1 cu ft) of luggage space are enough even for a family of five and the access is great thanks to the wide hatch opening.

The stable under the hood - down 50 horsepower from the lowest powered gasoline engine – makes the Cayenne Diesel the least powerful Porsche in recent years. Not so nice, right? Well, it also makes this the most economical Cayenne in the whole range. During the city course on our test drive we managed a fuel consumption of approximately 13 liters per 100 kilometers (US 18.1 mpg).

That's pretty good considering we're talking about a 2315 kilograms (5100 pounds) wildebeest on wheels. Sure, the official Porsche figures are a bit better, with only 11.6 liters of diesel used every 100 kilometers (US 20.3 mpg), but we should also take into account the fact that we drove it in a highly traffic-congested city. Unfortunately, throttle response at the low end of the rev scale, before the turbo begins to spool up, is sluggish, and the six-speed automatic tends to start in second gear unless manually controlled or fingered (no pun intended) by pressing a steering wheel shift button into first.

The Cayenne Diesel’s over 5,000 pounds of weight feels burdensome even for an engine this mighty though. But once it’s energized (read: over 2000 rpms), the 550 Nm (405.6 lb ft) of torque can rock this SUV back on its rear wheels while hurtling out of tighter city turns.

A second annoyance is steering that’s maybe a little bit TOO direct. Some drivers will require a day or two to adjust their reflexes. The Cayenne feels as if it’s tuned more for the race track and mountain road use than ordinary urban driving or suburban commuting. The key is to steer with tidy wrist action instead of major elbow motion. Fast drivers will love it, patient cruisers most likely won’t.

Porsche condones towing up to almost four tonnes ( 8,000 pounds) with the Cayenne, which might seem excessive for the V6 model, but not for the new torquey Diesel. The overall visibility is great thanks to the large windows and the gargantuan side-mirrors. Our test car was also fitted with front and rear parking sensors. No standard rear-view camera sadly, so lateral parking can become a bit of a pain sometimes, at least until you start getting along with the car's sheer size.

Even though it may look like it can haul a lot of cargo (which it does, actually), it does however haul... umm... the bacon. The superb all-wheel-drive system with dual-range, the more-than-precise steering and firm braking power give the Cayenne Diesel a surprising dexterity both on and off road. Its speed-rated tires do limit some of its gargantuan ability to go rock-crawling, but it is possible for it to navigate all manner of terrain into which a sane person should never, ever take a vehicle so expensive.

The new Porsche Dynamic Chassis Control system works with the optional air suspension to hydraulically limit body roll through the turns. There are up to four different ride heights available, of which only three are selectable - depending on the speed - from the cockpit. The system also improves driver control by isolating the steering, not to mention the passengers, from the jolts of undulating surfaces. The chassis control system is a big upgrade in the handling and performance dynamics.

The Americans hated the lack of third-row seats and the fact that the loading floor is a bit too high, but the Cayenne Diesel remains a competent SUV from the let's-go-for-a-ride-with-the-family point of view. The 8.3 seconds needed from naught to 100 kilometers per hour (62 mph) aren't anything spectacular, nor is the 215 kilometers per hour (134 mph) top speed.

Still, when we think about the fact this is quite a heavy SUV and the three-liter turbo-diesel engine under that curvy hood "only" makes 240 horsepower those numbers seem plenty. The fuel economy isn't all that bad either. At highway speeds we managed a fuel consumption of around 9 liters per 100 kilometers (US 26 mpg), which is just a tad worse than the advertised 7.9 liters per 100 kilometers (US 29.8 mpg).

On the whole, the addition of diesel engine as a more economical choice for the regular V6 Cayenne is not such a bad idea from the costs or performance point of view. In other words, the Cayenne Diesel offers better fuel consumption and similar (OK, slightly lower) performance compared with the gasoline Cayenne V6.