Motor Australia — January 2018

Porsche Cayenne S

Sprovesthatthefastestisn’talwaysthebest

EANDERING, annoyed,

up a Cretan mountain

track scratches

microscopically at the

core of the third-generation Porsche

Cayenne’s athletic prowess. Especially

when what Porsche calls its “off-road”

section could be cheerfully traversed

in a Golf.

So the Cayenne S can raise its ride

height to 240mm, with its active rear

anti-roll bar pushing wheels down

into holes and its all-wheel steering

shrinking its turning circle. Some

domestic driveways will be worse.

A bit later, though, this very same

Cayenne S whips into a third-gear

left hander with a trace of all-wheel

drift, slips into understeer on the still-

wet patch of tarmac in the shaded

lee of an overhanging cliff face,

then re-gathers itself as quickly as it

de-gathered, punching effortlessly

ENGINE2894ccV6,DOHC,24v,twin-turbo/POWER324kW@5700-6600rpm/TORQUE550Nm@1800-5500rpm/WEIGHT2020kg/0-100KM/H4.9sec (claim)/PRICE$145,000 (est)

First Fang

New. Fast. Driven.

M

byMICHAEL TAYLOR

with incessant dollops of new speed.

And there was a soaring road

crown and lumpy, broken edges that

the chunky Porsche just ignored,

swallowing up the suspension

equivalent of nails and broken glass

like they were sips of hot chocolate.

It all happened so swiftly, seamlessly

and elegantly that a casual observer

wouldn’t have noticed anything out of

the ordinary.

But something was clearly out of the

ordinary, because two tonnes of high-

rise luxury isn’t supposed to do that.

In history’s less ethical epochs, people

convinced elephants to tap dance, but

they didn’t tap dance well. And yet,

that’s the engineering equivalent of

what’s happened here.

For the driver, this sort of thing

is simple. Not quite effortless

and a sanitised step removed

from “engaging”, but it’s calm,

comforting, reassuring and composed

nonetheless.

For Porsche’s engineers, making

this happen was everything except

simple. Audi’s engineering team did a

lot of the heavy lifting, but Porsche’s

Dieselgate memories are fresh enough

to know Neckarsulm’s work is worth

checking forensically.

There are three stars to this show:

the sweetest V6 on the market, the

brilliant chassis dynamics and an

interior shorn of the button-fest that

dominated the bye-bye car.

While the base model is the most

improved player on the Cayenne

team and the Turbo’s power delivery

remains so brutal that it’s only ever a

twitched toe away from playing mini-

golf with a driver, the Cayenne S is by

far the best. (It’s also far from the best

seller, with the so-far-invisible Diesel

dominating the Cayenne scorecards).

Like

Chassis poise;

sweet power

delivery

STAR RATING

Dislike

Steering feel; still

very heavy; fixed

headrests

4.0

Its ride and handling

standout;capableof

comfortable cruising

and pothole masking

34 january 2018 motormag.com.au