Porsche Cayenne 2010 Review - International

Porsche Cayenne

What we liked
>> Much lighter, more precise feel
>> Better steering
>> More integrated interior

Not so much
>> Engine coarseness in Turbo and Hybrid
>> Hybrid pointless exercise
>> V6 even less relevant

Overall rating: 4.0/5.0
Engine/Drive train/Chassis: 4.0/5.0
Price, Packaging and Practicality: 4.0/5.0
Safety: 4.0/5.0
Behind the wheel: 4.5/5.0
X-factor: 4.0/5.0

About our ratings

OVERVIEW
>> A proper Porsche
The world expected big things from the original Cayenne, but it did more to deliver huge profits than it did the huge driving thrills you should expect for anything with a Porsche badge on the nose.

That it played off that badge was a given, but it was still too heavy, too remote, too much like a family SUV and too little like a Porsche in the way it looked, went, stopped and handled.

Oh, it went, alright, especially in twin-turbo V8 form, but that special Porsche-ness just wasn't ever there when corners got in the way.

There was a facelift, which moderately improved things and de-uglied the nose a bit, but this is the full second-generation version, completely revamped from the ground up.Indeed, it's no modest tweak, even if the scantily observant might be forgiven for thinking so. This redesign from the ground up shows Porsche has been listening.

It's stiffer, it uses less fuel across the board and it's much, much lighter. Even so, it will need, in the course of its life, to become lighter again, because at 2170kg, the Turbo is still a very, very hefty proposition.

Porsche is pushing the "light weight" angle with the new Cayenne, but 2.2 tonnes is still  bloody heavy. For a vehicle without a transfer case, it's too heavy.

There is one Cayenne that j-u-s-t slips below two tonnes, but you'd rather jump out of a winning lottery syndicate than the petrol V6, so forget it.

In the big volume comes the best news. The V8 Cayenne is, without doubt, the best of the new Cayennes and it's 180kg lighter than its predecessor.

Porsche's used new techniques in manufacturing to hang lighter panels off it everywhere and the body-in-white (the core structure of the car) weighs 111kg less than the old model's.

And yet, the Cayenne has grown even as it has shed its weight. The wheelbase is 40mm longer and pretty much all of that extra space is dedicated to the rear legroom. It's a touch taller, 11mm wider and that extra wheelbase has translated to a big rig that's 48mm longer than its predecessor.

It's not just bigger inside; it's better and more coherent. It picks up a Panamera-style centre console that looks like a big version of one of those silly Vertu super-expensive mobile phones.

It's a nicer place to be, by and large, and that applies whether you're in the front or the back. If you upgrade from the old back seat to the new one, there's a lot more legroom (almost 4cm of it) and the seat adjusts both fore-and-aft and you can also fiddle with three backrest angles. And the luggage space is huge and flexible, with three splits in the way they fold.

The dash console is all new and it adopts a lot of the Panamera's technology, like the large centre screen and the little navigation screen in the driver's instrument panel. And it works.

MECHANICAL
>> New from the ground up
The technical bits haven't been ignored, either, and the new Cayenne picks up Porsche's new eight-speed auto (that fits into the same space as the old six-speeder), which is claimed to be smoother, faster and even saves fuel.

The bad news is that, without a transfer case, the Cayenne's offroad abilities are utterly dependent on the off-road software mode. The good news is that the saved weight is substantial and, on Porsche's test track, it still seemed disturbingly effective.

It used to be that six speeds were all you needed to claim luxury or sporting pretensions in the modern world. That's now leapt up to eight, almost completely bypassing seven (except over at Benz). Lexus started the eight-speed trend and now Audi, BMW and Porsche have all jumped onboard.

Both of the extra gears are used as overdrives, to keep the revs down (by 20 per cent in top gear) to minimise both fuel consumption and cabin noise. The V8 actually reaches top speed in sixth gear, not eighth.

It's faster on each gearshift and, like all good referees, the eight-speeder in the Cayenne is invisible to everybody upstairs in the paying seats. But that's only if it's left to its own devices. Try to change gear yourself and you'll be tearing your hair out in a desperate search for understanding as to why human biomechanics change from Swabia to everywhere else in the world.

Especially when Porsche makes a song and dance about where it puts the key (on the left of the steering column in LHD cars) because it comes straight from Le Mans racing, where they found it saved them a few tenths of a second. Yet when it comes to their gear-shifting, they stick with the way supplier Bosch suggested, even if it's the opposite of what they do in racing.

It's quite ridiculous, because in manual mode you have to push the lever forward to change up and pull back to change down -- and no sequential racecar works that way.

It gets worse if you want to change using the sliding toggles on the steering wheel, because you just won't ever get it right and you'll end up throwing things in frustration. They are patently stupid... Porsche please refer to the intuitive systems found at M, at AMG, at Ferrari, at Lamborghini and at Maserati.

Porsche does understand that it's not a popular piece of logic, so it offers conventional left-is-down, right-is-up shift paddles as an option, but you have to pay to make it do what it should have done in the first place.

Anyway, it works far better if you just leave it in Drive, when the Cayenne figures out how and when to change gears by how fast you hit the throttle or the brake pedal...

Instead of developing a new transfer case, they've just gone with a lot of nerds sitting in Zuffenhausen writing software code. But, for all the offroading most Cayennes are likely to do, it works just as well as having sweaty men pouring smelted aluminium.

You switch a dashboard-mounted 'Off Road' switch and the engine mapping changes from delivering ultimate power or economy to delivering maximum traction at low revs. It uses more of the rev range in each gear, holding them longer and shifting later and, in manual mode, it deactivates the kickdown at the bottom of the throttle pedal.

The mode also allows the torque converter more slip to ease power on more gently, which combines with a descent-control system and the air-suspended models all lift their skirts to give more ground clearance. The driver can toggle through three height settings, too, and the ultimate level of offroading ability relies on locking the rear differential.

But most of the time, Cayenne's will see as much offroad use as Ducatis, so most people will concentrate on the other advances with the all-wheel-drive system, with its faster, more direct, more agile central differential.

Cayenne S Hybrid
>> Supercharged but not super
You'd think the easy thing would have been to just add the hybrid bits and pieces to the V6 Cayenne (look for our coverage from the international launch soon), but Porsche uses a completely different petrol engine -- a Volkswagen Audi Group-sourced 3.0-litre, supercharged petrol V6 (see also Touareg Hybrid).

The 245kW V6 is linked to a 34kW electric motor in a fairly conventional system, with Porsche shucking la-de-dah lithium-ion batteries in favour of a proven 288 Volt Nickel-Cadmium jobbie.

With both of its motors running hard, it will hit 100km/h in 6.5 seconds and uses less fuel even than the V6 petrol, with 8.2L/100km.

But the trouble with the Hybrid isn't the new technology. The supercharged V6 isn't a nice engine and there's no way to sugar coat it. It's disturbingly coarse at any throttle setting, but it's dreadful on a full-throttle burst. It's strong enough, though, and its 440Nm of torque does the driving by itself most of the time without ever needing to call on the extra performance offered by the electric motor's huge 300Nm torque boost.

There are technical reasons why that doesn't add up to 740Nm (it's just 580) of torque, but adding the zap pulls the 0-100km/h sprint time down by a second, Porsche says.

It does some things very well, including a "sailing" mode for cruising, when it turns off the petrol engine to deliver the highest economy.

Yet it lacks cohesion and fluency and, frankly, it doesn't feel like a Porsche. The brake pedal, in particular, loses a lot of feel right from the first time you touch it and it feels a bit like standing on a tennis ball. You also find three odd clicks during the accelerator pedal's travel, and it turns out they are in-built triggers for the software to start doing other things of which you're never quite aware.

It's an okay car but it's heavily compromised and not the best Cayenne out there. Indeed, it's not even close.

Cayenne S
>> Pick of the bunch
That title goes to the V8 Cayenne S. The mainstay of Aussie Cayenne sales until the turbodiesel arrived, the S should redress the balance this time around. Simply, it's the best Cayenne you can buy.

The 4.8-litre pumps out 294kW and 500Nm of torque and powers the big all-wheel drive to 100km/h in 5.9 seconds. That's much more like it, and uses only 0.6L/100km more than the V6. Hmmm.

It also runs a respectable 258km/h top speed, which is 40km/h more than the diesel, 28km/h more than the V6 and 16 more than the Hybrid. Indeed, it's only 20km/h slower than the Big Daddy turbo.

It's not just respectfully quick for a big machine, but it's also disturbingly agile in its handling and has a purity of performance delivery that even the Turbo can't match.

At 2065kg, it's more than 100kg lighter than its big brother, and you quickly get to grips with its progressive, forgiving handling. In fact, it takes only a couple of corners before you're right at home throwing the Cayenne S around a track like you'd grown up in it.

The engine is by far the smoothest in the Cayenne range and it's strong and flexible. But the real upshot is that this is the car that feels most like a Porsche.

It cruises beautifully at speed, its steering has a life in it that the others lack. Even the way the body moves on its springs makes you convinced that it is this car to which Porsche's engineers gave the most love.

It has the best ride quality on its taller tyres and you just never suffer from that disturbing sideways head toss that a lot of SUVs give you.

Its suspension adjustment works properly, too, even if some people would like more noticeable steps between them. That doesn't really matter, because Comfort rides beautifully and Sport enhances its character, rather than switching it.

For the people who can afford it, there will be no other Cayenne and that's fair enough, because this thing will leap into the beyond anytime you breathe on the accelerator. It's just that brutal and it's just that urgent.

There's not a space in traffic that the Turbo won't streak into if you want, and there's not a piece of straight tarmac out there that it won't shorten with a savage shove in the middle of your shoulder blades. And it never stops...

For all that, it doesn't ride like the Cayenne S, and it's nowhere near as smooth in the engine. In fact, it's downright coarse at some revs (particularly 4200-4400rpm) and throttle openings, which is one of the reasons why it's geared to do just 1400rpm in eighth gear at 100km/h.

Strength, then, rather than smoothness, is its key weapon. But what a weapon!

OUR VERDICT
>> F for FUN
There's one big difference between the old Cayenne and this one. This one is fun.

It's no Boxster, for sure, but it goes far closer to justifying the badge than any Cayenne before it.

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