2005 Porsche Cayenne Test Drive

More Spice, Less Sauce

The Porsche Cayenne might be sacrilegious to some, but it's hard to argue with the recipe.

Porsche would like it to be known far and wide that the carmaker is not new to the off-roading game.

At a recent event held in Birmingham, Ala. -- where the press got to drive both the new $55,900 Cayenne S and $88,900 Cayenne Turbo through tortuous mud bogs, and around the twists and straits of the amazing new Barber Motorsports Park -- Porsche executives stressed repeatedly that 356 and 911 Porsche sports cars have been breathing dirt and dust on the world's rally circuit for generations. And, naturally, they've been winning, too.

Still, we'd like to interject one highly significant point: Those were sports cars made to handle off-road racing, while the Cayenne is the first SUV of any kind made to handle on-road race courses. That is, while you'll find below our detailed commentary on the Cayenne's earnest off-road chops, the far more significant challenge for Porsche was to make a SUV/crossover (a vehicle built on a car chassis but sitting at a truck-like height) that could still perform like a Porsche on the road and track.

It would be easy to downplay such a challenge and say that Porsche could simply benchmark a rival like BMW's $40,000 to $66,000 X5 and choose to surpass such handling and engine performance characteristics. But that wouldn't result in a Porsche -- a car that, by definition for nearly anyone who has ever driven one, responds to your instincts as much as your physical inputs. Cock your head toward the next apex, roll your right foot from the throttle to the brake, flick the gearshift from fourth to second gear and a 911 does precisely what you expect it to. And with a grace unlike all but the most expensive rivals on the marketplace, from Maserati/Ferrari and Lamborghini to BMW and Aston Martin.

By all rights, then, the Cayenne was an impossible mission. The 911 is a bargain, with exotic-car handling and performance at (mostly) sub-$100,000 prices. Only the $46,500 BMW M3 offers a similar price/performance/cachet relationship.

Yet no extant SUV comes even close to what Porsche wants to achieve. Just do the math:

• The Cayenne has a heavy, sophisticated all-wheel-drive system; the suspension has to be firm enough to respond quickly at 150 mph but still needs the slow-speed elasticity to function well on brutal off-road routes.



• It has seating for five and room for piles of luggage; the entire cockpit is trimmed in loads more leather, carpeting, metal and wood than any 911.



• Even the weight of a higher-capacity HVAC system, more wiring and an optional 14-channel Bose surround-sound audio system adds to the level of sophistication.



• The Cayenne S tips the scales at nearly 5,000 pounds, nearly a ton more weight than the heft of the average 911. The Turbo is even heavier.

You might have inferred from this big buildup that we think Porsche has mostly achieved every single one of its lofty goals with the Cayenne, but there are some compromises here, too. Naturally, the devil is in the details. Read on to find out more.