‘There is no need to use all of the car’s speed on every journey. At low speeds, even on a motorway, a Porsche should offer a rewarding driving experience’ – Professor Dr.-ing h.c Ferdinand Porsche, 1989.
‘So, can I drive the Cayenne?’, ‘Of course you can, but it will be a V6, is that all right? I thought about it for a nanosecond – not that I really had a choice. Given a chance, I would be blasting across the Sahara in a 450 bhp Cayenne Turbo or trundling down the Cote d’Azure in the Cayenne S. ‘Hello..,’ the voice on the other side was getting a bit impatient. ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘I want to drive the V6 and I will reach the showroom at eight sharp.’ Overnight, I studied the spec sheet. The Cayenne Turbo does a 0 to 100 kph sprint in 5.6 seconds, the Cayenne S does the same trick a second later at 6.8 seconds and ahem, the car I was about to drive, manages this in 9.7 seconds.
So what’s it with just four seconds, you may ask. Actually, quite a lot when you are talking Porsche’s language. But then, even Porsche had to have an entry level SUV and there was no way they could get a diesel engine into their lineup. True, Alfas and Beemers can drink the stinky, sticky fuel, but Porsche aficionados would commit mass suicide if the high priests of Zuffenhausen ever decided to fit the Porsche crest on what would essentially be a VW diesel engine – which they have in V10 guise, fitted under the hood of the Cayenne’s twin sister, the Touareg.
So essentially, the Cayenne (as the V6 version is simply called) is an adequately powerful version of the big Porsche. The V6 motor displaces 3200cc to develop just about 250 bhp at 6000 rpm and 31 kgm of torque between 2500 and 5500 rpm. It all sounds good till someone tells you that the Cayenne Turbo has 450 stallions and the Cayenne S comes packed with 340 bhp under its hood. Sigh!
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