Porsche Macan 2019 Review - International

If the Cayenne was the SUV that saved Porsche, the Macan was the one that made it rich.

Since it arrived in 2015 it found 80,000, 95,000 and, last year, 97,000 buyers annually, and it’s expected to grab another 100,000 this year.

The Macan has taken up a dominant position for Porsche Cars Australia too, with its 2500 sales per annum (give or take a couple of hundred) accounting for about 55 per cent of Porsche’s 4500 annual local sales.

So the Porsche Macan is pretty important, and even moreso because most of them are sold to first-time Porsche buyers.

The upgraded 2019 version, which will arrive here in February next year, retains its core parts but moves its game forward by some margin.

Also, the Diesel has gone. That’s a big thing for the Macan range, because even if the old entry-level petrol version was only about 20 per cent of the car’s sales, it’s now got to do more of the heavy lifting at the bottom end of the price point.

The shortcomings of the old Macan were clear: Porsche went hard at turning the donor Audi Q5 architecture into something that was the best-handling SUV in the class, but its refinement seemed to get lost in the process.

This time around (and here’s the short version of this road test, actually), it retains its crisp handling but picks up so much refinement, so much interior equipment and has such a huge reduction in interior noise levels that it could fool people into thinking it was an all-new car.

It’s not, even though the facelifted Porsche Macan will be short-cycled to jump onto the Volkswagen Group’s latest MLB Evo architecture.

So it retains signature items like its ultra-short dashboard, its wrap-around bonnet and its all-wheel drive powertrain.

The upgrades to its hefty bits include a revised version of the 2.0-litre turbocharged inline four-cylinder petrol engine up front, some tweaks to the seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission and some significant suspension upgrades.

There are new front suspension parts, new wheels and tyres, bigger front brakes for the Macan S and even manlier engine mounts.

The interior and the driver-assistance systems have taken the biggest leaps forward, adopting the bigger 10.9-inch touch-screen infotainment unit (up from 7.2-inch) and there are jumps forward in traffic-jam assistance, lane-keeping and autonomous emergency braking.

The obvious change here is that the old Audi-built 3.0-litre turbo-petrol V6 has gone and an all-new Porsche-developed 2.9-litre turbo-petrol V6 has replaced it.

Besides the slightly odd capacity (which Porsche still calls a 3.0-litre engine), it brings in a single twin-scroll turbo inside the vee part of the V6, plus it integrates the exhaust manifolds into the cylinder-heads.

The short version of that is that it takes stuff that traditionally sat outside the engine and integrates it inside the engine, reducing the number of parts, the weight and joining them into the engine’s core cooling circuits.

That gives it 260kW of power over 5400-6400rpm and 480Nm of torque over 1360-4800rpm, so there’s basically no gap between the low-down urge and the up-high surge.

The 2019 Porsche Macan S is heavier than the poverty pack, at 1865kg, and that’s mostly because of the engine, the bigger brakes (360mm front discs, compared to 345mm) and more everything.

Porsche claims it runs to 100km/h in 5.1 seconds, on its way to a 254km/h top speed – nearly 30km/h upstream of the four-pot.

Compared to the old car, the latest Porsche Macan S scores upgrades like standard LED headlights, 20-inch wheels, a parking-assist package (including a reversing camera and surround view), tinted glass, the larger 75-litre fuel tank and Apple CarPlay.

But it doesn’t stop there, with standard Porsche Active Suspension Management (PASM) actively adjusting dampers, rear side airbags, 14-way electric seats and a three-year warranty.

Oh, and it’s quite a bit quicker.

Australian cars will run the 185kW version of the four-cylinder engine (the Europeans only claim 180kW because of their mandatory particulate filters), plus 370Nm of torque and it’s supposedly capable of reaching 100km/h in 6.7 seconds (in its standard form).

Yet it never quite feels that quick. It’s the weight that does it. Even in its lightest form, the Macan is 1795kg, with no options added in and on the smallest 235/60 and 255/55 R8 front and rear tyres.

It’s smooth, for sure, and the engine feels tremendously sophisticated but it just never feels like what a brand virgin might expect a Porsche to punch like.

Nope, it just doesn’t really go like a Porsche. The trouble isn’t so much straight-line sprinting, but mid-range punch for overtaking. There just never seems to be the strength underfoot that you need.

The 2019 Porsche Macan’s urgency out of bends never matches that of the suspension in the middle of them. It always feels as though the engine’s performance is holding back the rest of the car, though it’s right up there for sophistication.

It’s just acceptable in the low revs, but it spins with genuine sweetness and crispness at higher revs, like about 5000rpm. The noise is nicely tuned, the vibrations are almost non-existent and it all works nicely. Not powerfully, but nicely.

It’s helped out by the seven-speed dual-clutch transmission’s enthusiasm for swapping through its gears, and Porsche has tightened up the Sport mode’s gearshifts, while it reaches for higher gears as fast as it can in Normal mode.

Fortunately, what it does well, it does very well. Our cars were fitted with the optional acoustic glass (and we’d recommend that) and Porsche says that helps with the cabin noise levels, but the reality is that the base noise and vibration levels are far lower than they were.

But that’s the stock version. (Note that the expert ratings you see above are for the 2019 Porsche Macan S; I’ve given the entry-level 2019 Porsche Macan much lower scores, as follows.)

Engine, drivetrain and chassis: 15
Price, packaging and practicality: 15
Safety and technology: 15
Behind the wheel: 14
X-factor: 13

And because we have no mechanism to provide separate dis/likes for different cars in the same review – and these are two very different cars – here they are for the base 2019 Porsche Macan:

What we liked:
Refinement
Noise levels
Sweet-spinning motor

Not so much:
Not Porsche-fast
Not Porsche-light
Lacks low-end torque

So it basically picks up where the four-cylinder version leaves off, with the addition of better urge, better sound and better equipment.

Firstly, for the addition of 75kW and 29km/h, the S loses nothing to the lesser Macan in refinement, whisper-quiet highway running and the eradication of unwanted vibrations and harshness inside the cabin.

It has become a lovely thing, capable of terrific feats of long-distance cruising and gentle meandering, neither of which it could really do before.

It rides the bumps with indifference to them, it reduces road and tyre roar to limousine levels of refinement, it maintains its steering calmness at speed and it’s a doddle around town.

It’s such a surprise after the last one that it’s like the Macan S has found a whole new critical chunk of character that was missing before. And it seems clear that Porsche made the first one feel so firm and noisy because it wanted to confirm its sport car relationship.

They don’t think that anymore, and it’s like they’ve run down a gripes list of every reviewer and many owners and just fixed them all. Well, most of them.

Performance is exactly where you should expect it to be; not just quick, but strong in the mid-range and it even sounds good and nuanced from its idle to its redline.

The Chrono Sport Plus package is standard on the Macan S, which means the adoption of the 911’s steering wheel, complete with its mode button beneath the right-side spoke.

It’s strong everywhere because the torque curve smashes out its maximum effort at less than 1500 revs and the power curve has already taken over by the time the torque curve begins its downward slide at 4800rpm.

That’s how it feels on the road, too: immensely strong everywhere. From the traffic lights in town it pulls away comfortably, and it punches away strongly every time you want it to pass another car on the highway, too.

It is a fine, muscular powertrain that gives the upcoming Macan Turbo a strong baseline to work with.

It spins with freedom to its upper reaches, it drops revs quickly to help you balance the car mid-corner and the snappy dual-clutch auto works in near-perfect harmony with it.

The all-wheel drive system has more work to do here, balancing the power levels from one end to the other to keep its traction from breaking loose, and you can’t really feel it switching axles.

The 2019 Porsche Macan S stops harder and more assuredly, too, with 360mm x 36mm front brake discs (compared to 345mm x 30mm) and six-piston callipers (up from four).

It’s a beautifully well-rounded package, from the clean interior to the three-part LED light panel in the rear, and it’s a far better day-to-day car than its predecessor was.

And, frankly, it’s hard to find a reason to advise against buying the latest Porsche Macan S.

How much does the 2019 Porsche Macan cost?
Price: $81,400 plus on-road costs
Available: February 2019
Engine: 2.0-litre turbo-petrol four-cylinder
Output: 185kW/370Nm
Transmission: Seven-speed dual-clutch automatic, all-wheel drive
Fuel: 8.1L/100km
CO2: 185g/km
Safety rating: TBC

How much does the 2019 Porsche Macan S cost?
Price: $97,500 plus on-road costs
Available: February 2019
Engine: 2.9-litre turbo-petrol V6
Output: 260kW/480Nm
Transmission: Seven-speed dual-clutch automatic, all-wheel drive
Fuel: 8.6L/100km
CO2: 196g/km
Safety rating: TBC