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.

Road And Track

One of the black magic tricks for any engineer trying to make a vehicle that's fine for a soccer mom but also amazing in a 65-mph power slide at Barber Motorsports Park is steering that's sensitive, but not Doberman-nervous.

That's precisely what you get with the Cayenne, a responsive, quick tiller that's great for darting around on a twisty country lane but also works quite well at low speeds in a parking lot. It helps that the Cayenne has a tight, 39-foot turning radius, by the way.

It also helps that what's true of the steering -- that balance between sensitive and nervous -- is true of the Cayenne in general.

At Barber, which has a few very tricky off-camber dropping turns, the Cayenne was superbly forgiving, with very little chassis roll. The worst sin you can commit is to use the brakes too little. But the Cayenne has huge, 13.78-inch rotors with six calipers at every corner, so this so-called SUV will stop on a dime -- like all Porsches. And you can use that stopping power to set the Cayenne's nose (so all the weight shifts to the wheels that steer) before the next bend and then just use the gas to get powering toward the next apex.

Two revelations occurred at the racetrack:

• There isn't another crossover/SUV on the planet that could be driven this hard without scaring the bejesus out of us. The Infiniti FX45 and the forthcoming Cadillac SRX may come close (we'll let you know), but neither will be as capable as the Cayenne off road.



• On two instances while we were waiting in the pits for our turn on the track, a Cayenne S and Turbo barreled by. I was taking notes and heard rather than saw the vehicles (until they had already passed), and my brain told me those were the sounds of exotic racing cars. The engines make deep, baritone purrs that echo out in a sports car song from the exhaust pipes. No SUV ever sang like that before.