I drove a $136,000 Porsche Cayenne Turbo to see if it's still the finest SUV ever made by human hands on planet Earth
The 2019 Porsche Cayenne Turbo hit the road near our suburban New Jersey test center wearing a "Biscay Blue Metallic" paint job. The Cayenne started at $125,000, but a batch of performance options added just over $10,000 to the already impressive sticker price.
When the Cayenne first arrived, a big question was whether the traditional bug-eye Porsche design cues would translate to an SUV. They didn't, really, and they haven't — but now it doesn't matter because we've gotten used to it.
Porsche has added character lines and a higher overall level of surface flash to the Cayenne, now in its third-generation. The latest Cayenne is about as sleek as its possible to make the vehicle without sloping the roof so much that the second row becomes uninhabitable.
As with its stablemate, the Panamera, the Cayenne's rear end has always been ... problematic. Or hideously bulbous, depending on your point of view.
To be honest, there's no way to design an SUV that mitigates the need to have a giant liftgate or cargo hold dominating the rear third of the vehicle.
The best thing I can say about this part of the 2018 Cayenne Turbo is that the slashing, wraparound tail light configuration and quad pipes jazz up what's the SUV's worst angle.
The integrated roofline spoiler does what it can. (This spoiler, by the way, is dynamic, adjusting to the Cayenne's speed.)
I dunno, I still hate looking at the rear end of this thing.
When the gaping maw opens, you have about 27 cubic feet of cargo space to work with and roughly double that when the second row of seats is folded down. That's really quite good.
Oof! Our Cayenne Turbo tester had 21-inch wheels and some seriously beefy brake calipers to aid in controlling its nearly 5,000 lbs. of bulk.
Time to visit the all-black leather interior. It's lovely, but also purposeful, in the way Porsche interiors often are.
The Cayenne is a good-sized SUV, so rear legroom is pretty capacious.
And a dual-pane moonroof floods the cabin with abundant natural light.
It's always a bit weird to climb into a Cayenne and find a steering wheel that wouldn't be out of place on a 911, right down to the drive-mode selector. The tachometer, of course, is front and center in the instrument cluster, and if you cast your eye to the right, you see the familiar Porsche dashboard clock.
Sport and Sport Plus are quite fun, and punching the center button supplies a 20-second burst of oomph from the engine. The Cayenne Turbo's 0-60 time is around 4 seconds (a few tenths quicker, according to Porsche), and the top speed is 177 mph.
That boost is tracked via a dial in the instrument cluster.
Porsche's PCM infotainment system runs on a 12.3-inch touchscreen.
The usual features are present, from easy Bluetooth-paring to USB connectivity. But the system is also where the driver can configure the Cayenne's drive modes.
You can also use the system to adjust the Cayenne's ride height.
Now for the main event: a visit to the powerplant!
The 4.0-liter, twin-turbocharged V8 makes 541 horsepower with 568 pound-feet of torque. This Porsche can tow nearly 8,000 pounds, which is staggering. Fuel economy isn't: 15 mpg city/19 highway/17 combined, and that's on premium gas.
The eight-speed automatic pipes the power to the Cayenne Turbo's all-wheel-drive system. There isn't a whiff of turbo lag with this machine, and the transmission can switch to manual if you want to shift gears yourself.
The key fob, naturally, is Porsche-shaped.
So is the Porsche Cayenne still the finest SUV ever made by human hands on planet Earth?
Oh good golly yes!
I had been driving the 2019 Porsche Cayenne Turbo for all of five minutes when I was already making appreciative noises and trying to hold back the whoops in the interest of critical objectivity.
The Cayenne was mind-blowing at 25 mph. It all came rushing back. They laughed at the idea of a Porsche SUV. Then they quit laughing. But still there are openings for jeers. After all, isn't this just a rebadged Volkswagen?
HAHAHAHA! Silence, ye doubters. No, the Cayenne isn't a 911. But is it a Porsche? Sure. Beyond that, however, is so much more. It remains the greatest SUV on the road, and in my view, the greatest SUV ever built by the species. True, the Land Rover Defender is impressive. But the Cayenne does its thing in Porsche fashion on the road while also offering staggering offroad capability — rock-crawling, yes, sort of, but really the kind of high-speed rallying that you would logically subject this machine to.
The Cayenne is simply good, good, and more good, and the top-level Turbo trim is especially delightful, capable of orchestrating a brutal symphony of horsepower from that magnificent 541-horsepower, twin-turbo V8. But that's just one dimension of performance bliss.
You also have the bracing handling, delivered through an intricate orchestration of mega-tech features, ranging from a rooftop spoiler than can adapt to increased speed to rear-axle steering and electro-hydraulic roll stabilization.
It's my policy to avoid getting too deep in this gearheady stuff (my driving is 90% emotion and 10% engineering). But with the Cayenne Turbo, it definitely adds up to an SUV that drives, as it always has, like a Porsche — but with the vehicle's upgrades, now more like a Porsche than ever.
As with most modern luxury cars, the Cayenne has a suite of driver-assist features, including adaptive cruise control and a nice, low-speed, stop-and-go system. These work well, as advertised, but c'mon — this is a Porsche! The urge to take control and do the driving yourself is ever-present. And that's ultimately what separates the Cayenne from some (not all) of the competition.
I could go on, but you get the idea. The Cayenne has been absolutely, shockingly brilliant since it first arrived in the early 2000s. A decade and half later, same story. The vehicle's magnificence simply increases with time. Our Business Insider road-test crew was basically speechless after a week with the Cayenne Turbo. True, I'm not nuts about the design. Never have been. So what? Design isn't everything.
Is the Cayenne still the finest SUV made by human hands on planet Earth?
Nod quietly, nod respectfully, and accept that unquestionable genius does sometimes happen.
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