Porsche 2008 Cayenne Turbo

Wall Street Journal - June 22, 2007

..Look back a decade, and a 400-horsepower engine was an oddity, strictly the province of six-figure exotic sports cars that rarely saw the road. Today, Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche sell all manner of sedans, station wagons and SUVs with this kind of power, mass- produced daily-drivers priced in the five figures. What's more, this mine-is-bigger-than-yours contest shows no sign of nearing its limit, as recent introductions of several 500- and even 600-horsepower models attest.

Among the newcomers stands a reworked-for-2008 Porsche Cayenne Turbo

which hits that absurd 500 mark, thanks to a bigger 4.8-liter, twin-turbocharged V8 with direct fuel injection. Porsche claims its top-of-the-range sport-utility vehicle now has a top speed of 171 miles per hour and can accelerate from zero to 60 in 4.9 seconds, despite weighing nearly 5,200 pounds. The only possible justification for spending the $94,595 it costs to park one in your driveway is hubris.

Indeed, press the Cayenne Turbo's new "sport" button to punch up the throttle response and firm up the suspension, goose the throttle, and you're Dennis Tito. Behind the wheel of this truck it certainly feels like you can conquer space and time, thanks in large part to a new optional chassis-control system that uses hydraulic motors to twist the vehicle's antisway bars, countering body roll. Back-seat passengers may lose their lunch, but the new Cayenne Turbo corners even more like a true Porsche than its predecessor.

That one already was the ne plus ultra of sporty SUVs. Cost considerations meant Porsche wasn't about to change it much beyond the engine and suspension upgrades. So the new model uses the same basic body structure, and it still looks like a bloated Porsche 911 coupe with an extra set of doors. Similarly, the interior continues on as a supersized version of the 911's. With acres of leather and suede covering nearly every interior surface, it's like driving around in a Western-wear shop. New headlights set into a new front-end design and some tweaks to the aerodynamic bits at the back are the other significant changes, helping the Cayenne Turbo cut a sleeker path through the air, thereby reducing its coefficient of drag from 0.39 to

0.35. Oh, and there's a new power liftgate -- don't all you Cayenne owners rush out to trade up at once.

The SUV is the first 2008 model-year vehicle I've tested. As such, the Cayenne Turbo's fuel economy -- now there's an oxymoron -- deserves special mention, since the EPA has revised its estimates to better reflect faster driving speeds and air-conditioner use, among other factors. This is going to reduce stated fuel economy across the board, even for 2008s that are mechanically identical to last year's models. (That's not the case here.) The new Cayenne Turbo's official EPA rating is 12 mpg in the city, 19 mpg on the highway and 14 mpg combined. By comparison, the 2006 Cayenne Turbo -- there was no 2007 model -- was rated at 13 city, 18 highway and 15 combined under the EPA's old system.

In the real world, I got 14.6 mpg over nearly 800 miles of driving, with the preponderance of that on the highway. A few acceleration runs and a day spent doing errands dragged that number down some, but it's unreasonable to expect to get 19 mpg out of a Cayenne Turbo, the new EPA highway estimate. Porsche insists the new model returns up to 11% better highway fuel economy than its predecessor, which may be true in a laboratory, but not with any normal person driving. Definitely not with the vehicle in "sport" mode, which fixes the electronic throttle control's sluggishness and the six-speed automatic transmission's refusal to use first gear. The thing is, the Cayenne Turbo's 516 lb.- ft. of torque is OxyContin-addictive, and once those turbos spool up, it burns gas like a refinery fire...