Porsche Cayenne 2018 Review - International

We had our first passenger ride of the third-generation Cayenne last month and now we’ve driven it at the global launch in Greece. The Turbo might be faster and the stock version might be cheaper, but the sweetness and balance of the S comfortably make it the sweet spot of the new Cayenne range. The interior is quieter and more comfortable, the handling is crisper and even the engine’s performance is stronger than before.

The Cayenne has gone from being the horrid truck that bastardised Porsche to the stroke of genius that saved the 911. Second only to the Macan in sales volumes, the large luxury SUV is critical to Porsche, and the third generation won’t be any different.

When it comes to Australia in the first half of next year, it might not actually start out with the diesel that’s by far the biggest seller. The current plan is to arrive with three petrol powerplants, beginning with the stock Cayenne, which has taken the biggest step forward of the three versions we sampled.

The Chrono Package version of the 3.0-litre turbocharged V6 petrol engine slashes 1.7 seconds from the old car’s 100km/h sprint, which is now down to a respectable 5.9 seconds (6.2sec without it). Its power has risen to 250kW and its torque is up to 450Nm.

The flagship (for now) is the mighty new Cayenne Turbo, hissing and bellowing its way to 404kW of power and 770Nm of torque.

It’s easily the fastest Cayenne, too, with the Chrono pack helping it to slip to 100km/h in 3.9 seconds (or 4.1sec without it) and a 286km/h top speed.

It’s uncomfortably the heaviest of the trio, at 2175kg, a 10kg improvement over the old Turbo. When you remove the 6.7kg Porsche claims a new crankshaft manufacturing technique saved it, Porsche only found 3.3kg in the rest of the car, or 0.15 per cent of its total weight. And that, Porsche, is just not trying hard enough, even if it’s 63mm longer and 23mm wider.

Besides being the quickest, it’s also the Cayenne with the shiny toys, including an active rear spoiler that deploys above 160km/h and ranges through five positions, the most dramatic of which is an air brake that flips up at 28.2 degrees (but does its most important work adjusting the centre of aerodynamic pressure under hard braking).

But it’s not the best Cayenne, and Turbo buyers will pay a price for paying the price. Its handling is predictable and clean and there is bags of grip, but it lacks the sweetness, poise and cheerfully unflappable nature of the Cayenne S. Its engine, surprisingly, feels coarser and less happy about dancing its way into higher rpm as well.

The sweet spot
So the Cayenne S is the range’s sweet spot, with its 324kW/550Nm Porsche-developed 2.9-litre twin-turbo V6 having 155 fewer kilos than the Turbo to launch up the road, out of corners and into the bowser.

It’s also 155 fewer kilograms to arrest under brakes, 155 fewer to corral during fast direction changes and 155 fewer to make arrangements with coming out of corners, too.

It’s 65kg lighter than its predecessor, spec for spec, even though it carries more equipment, more technology and more comfort than before.

The Audi origins of plenty of its key stuff are unmistakeable thanks to Porsche’s Bavarian sibling taking the engineering lead for the Cayenne’s MLB Evo large-vehicle architecture.

It uses a clutch-controlled hang-on differential for the all-wheel drive, an electro-mechanical active anti-roll bar at the back-end, acoustic glass to quieten the cabin, a three-chamber air-suspension system...

The list goes on, and while Audi developed most of it for the SQ7, Porsche has made it all fit into the Zuffenhausen ethos, even ditching Audi’s stand-alone battery for the 48-volt system and replacing it with a lighter, more expensive capacitor.

It carries over inside, where the outlandish button-fest that was the old Cayenne has given way to a wonderfully simple (but word-heavy) black centre console, a massive 12.3-inch touch-screen infotainment system.

What makes the Cayenne S the Special One is the way it does so much more than the Turbo, with less. Its fewer cylinders break with V6 convention by delivering a song that’s not just smooth, but sweet and enthusiastic for revs, in a way the brutal biturbo V8 just isn’t.

It’s a composed powertrain in every situation, at every part of its rev band, at any speed. It’s smooth and clean at idle, starting with a gruff bellow and settling into a satin rhythm that belies its relationship to the slightly coarser, flatter 3.0-litre V6 (they share engine blocks and the bore diameter).

Beyond there, it’s all torque for a while, with its 550Nm arriving at only 1800rpm on full throttle, then staying on point until 5500. The power peak arrives at 5700rpm and it’s still there at 6600, so Porsche has given the Cayenne S 4800 revs of pure potency.

And here’s proof
And that’s how it drives. It’s always ready to leap, if that’s what you need, and it’s ready to calmly waft along, too, if boring roads are inflicted upon you.

It will whip out of corners brilliantly at 5000rpm after you manually whack the paddle shifter down to just the right gear or it will haul itself out on torque from 3000rpm, with little discernible difference in its pace.

It’s strong across the board, and smooth, too. The gruff signature Porsche engine note at low revs gives way to a softer, smoother tone at middle revs and a sweet, free and easy surge up high.

Its strivings are spotlighted by an eight-speed automatic transmission so effective that, in reality, it turns the wheel-mounted paddle shifters into exquisite alloy sculptures to idly caress in quieter moments.

First gear is lower than before and it’s effectively a six-speed transmission with two cruising gears tacked on for fuel economy and reduced cabin noise. All three Cayennes reach their top speeds in sixth gear.

The car’s default Comfort mode gives it longer, unfelt shifts, while its Sport mode hurries them through and makes you feel them more, but not in an uncomfortable way. It’s also so good at picking the right gear for each corner that you soon stop bothering about doing it yourself.

The downside is that it’s throttle response is so much sharper and its shifts so much crisper that, at light throttle around town, it can feel jerky with rougher changes, and you won’t be able to smooth them out on the throttle. It’s a real Sport mode that works at its best with plenty of energy being pushed through the car, especially because it also stiffens the air suspension system.

The Chrono package (all of the test cars had it, and it allows brief overboosting, delivers launch control and has tauter throttle response) also adds both a customisable Individual mode and a Sport + mode, which is where things really get wicked.

The throttle response tightens up again, ratchets the suspension to an even firmer level and bangs through the gear changes with an outlandish (and clearly marketing-driven) crack that you feel through the fixed head restraint.

Do you gain from it? Well, no. Perhaps it would help the SUV perform better on a track but in the real world the Cayenne needs the extra initial suspension compliance of the softer Sport mode to deliver its best between the end of its braking and the start of its acceleration.

What it does exceptionally well, though, is demonstrate the breadth of the three-chamber air suspension, which effortlessly spans the conflicting worlds of comfort and all-out attack.

There’s no word on whether this will the usual outrageously priced option in Australia (ditto the Chrono package and, and, and...). Steel springs and conventional dampers are stock items on the Cayenne S in Europe, but Porsche didn’t fit a single Cayenne with them for the launch.

Firstly, the air suspension’s body control is exemplary and its response times are far faster than the clunkier, rather stepping feel of earlier systems. The job of controlling the body is now managed by one computer, which governs the efforts of the air suspension parts and the 48-volt active anti-roll bar, which is a big reason for the improvement.

At up to 0.8g of lateral acceleration, the active roll bar essentially eliminates all evidence of body roll, and it’s smart enough to keep doing it when you flick through a series of heavily cambered esses or sudden, flat direction changes. So it deals disdainfully with urban cornering demands.

While the steering weighting (and the wheel itself) is perfect, the steering feedback levels display the architecture’s Audi origins by being flat and stubbornly even, regardless of the road surface or the stress of front tyres. But the chassis balance, suspension feedback and throttle response are all so good it scarcely matters.

It eases through rough urban conditions calmly, even serenely, and the cabin is as quiet as most of the Republican Senators who disagree with President Trump. The seats are brilliant, in the front and (for two people, anyway) in the rear. They’re supportive, comfortable and leave you fresh after hundreds of difficult kilometres on rough roads.

The genius of the chassis can be seen most clearly over roads that are heavily crowned and erratically chewed and lumped. Most quick machinery would prefer sticking to the middle to save their decorum, but the Cayenne S is just as fast and comfortable taking the best line for the corner and ignoring the road surface.

It just soaks it all up and translates it into speed, assurance and calm brilliance, with no head-toss over the worst of broken-road conditions.

It also stops stupendously well, thanks in part to 10-piston front callipers, but also to its new tungsten carbide-coated brake discs that are harder wearing, more fade resistant and (critical to more owners than those two benefits) generate less brake dust, so you’ll have to clean the wheels less often.

Step up inside too
The interior is a step in the right direction for Porsche, with far fewer buttons and a huge touch-screen infotainment system that takes its lead from smartphone gestures like swiping and pinching.

The rev counter remains front and centre in the instrument cluster, but it’s flanked by a pair of TFT digital screens that scroll through all manner of useful and less useful displays.

The driving position is perfect, with Porsche’s near-vertical steering wheel philosophy translated into SUV-speak, though it’s slightly hampered by the grab handle on the centre console being useless for the driver and in the way, and the hole to attach the visor to its hook is so strangely large that it lets the sun shine through it.

The centre console detailing takes some getting used to, and smudges quickly, but it works effectively and looks far neater than before, while the door pockets now swallow almost four litres of stuff, including a shaped zone for 1.5-litre bottles.

While Porsche insists there will never be a seven-seat Cayenne, the rear seat can move by up to 160mm, and the backrests adjusts across an 18-degree range.

It also has a luggage-boosting position, which adds 100 litres and takes it out to 770 litres. The rear seats don’t fold flat, though, and leave an angled step on their way to a 1710-litre maximum capacity.

To go along with all of that, Porsche insists it’s a good off-roader, but we only had an off-road course we could have comfortably traversed in a Camry. Still, it has an array of off-road modes, accessed by a touch-sensitive bit of the console, and it pushes up the ride height and changes the way it generates grip.

The anti-roll bar even pushes the wheels down to help maintain traction. It has 240mm of ground clearance, 525mm of wading depth and a 21-degree ramp-over angle and it can even lock up its rear axle, but does it work?

While it wasn’t enough off-roading to get any real idea of its abilities, it was enough to get it very dirty, which is more than most Cayennes will need to endure.

2018 Porsche Cayenne S pricing and specifications:
Price: TBC
On sale: First half 2018
Engine: 2.9-litre twin-turbo petrol V6
Output: 324kW/550Nm
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Fuel: 7.8L/100km
CO2: 178g/km
Safety rating: TBC