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2011 Porsche Cayenne: Nicely spiced
JIM KENZIE//FOR THE TORONTO STAR
For 2011, the Porsche Cayenne is pretty much an all-new vehicle and Jim Kenzie grudgingly admits it's a big improvement over previous editions.
LEIPZIG, GERMANY—Let’s deal with the elephant in the room right off the top:
I still don’t think Porsche should ever have glued its badge onto a 6,000-pound Volkswagen truck. It just runs contrary to lightness and efficiency, two hallmarks of Porsche’s precious brand identity.
I understand I have lost this fight. The customer is always right, even when he’s wrong.
Porsche has made a ton of money on Cayenne, it isn’t going away, and besides, Porsche has ended up in the ever-expanding Volkswagen corporate tent.
Life goes on; let’s move on with it.
Porsche refers to the 2011 Cayenne as the “third-generation,” due to a mid-cycle facelift on the original a few years ago, but this pretty-much-all-new vehicle is the first serious remake.
The V8 and Turbo V8 go on sale in Canada in early July, starting at $76,000 and $123,900 respectively.
The V6 arrives in September ($58,200) and the Hybrid in October ($80,800).
The new Cayenne at least is heading in the right direction, being lighter and considerably more efficient than before.
It also jumps on the hybrid bandwagon, although Porsche can be said to have invented that wagon. The original Dr. Ferdinand Porsche developed a remarkable vehicle called the Lohner-Porsche “Semper Vivus,” with a gasoline-electric hybrid power system driving electric motors in the front wheels away back in — wait for it — 1900.
He was also messing about with electric-four-wheel-motor drive back then — nothing new under the sun.
The chief designer of the new Cayenne is Mitja Borkert, a looks-even-younger-than-he-is native of East Germany who couldn’t believe his good luck when The Wall fell. His childhood dream of becoming a car designer wasn’t going to happen otherwise because they already had the Trabant in East Germany, and why would you need to design anything else?
Borkert noted that the new car had to look lighter because it was lighter.
“It also had to look more like a Porsche,” he said. “The hood shape, headlights, broad shoulders, the way the front fenders rise up above the hood, the large front air intakes, were all intended to make it look more like a member of the family.”
Stephen Murkett, who did the original Cayenne, had many of the same goals as Borkert did for the remake. It must have been a bit tricky for Borkert who still works alongside Murkett in Porsche’s design studio to tinker with his creation.
Still, this is progress.
The new car is 51 mm longer than before, 40 mm longer in wheelbase and a surprising seven mm taller — surprising because it looks notably lower and slimmer.
Said one Porsche official, “It looks like a fat guy who goes to the gym and comes out looking more like Daniel Craig.”
The interior is modelled after the Panamera sedan, with similar-looking switchgear in the centre console. Fit, finish and quality of materials are first-rate — Porsche has made great strides in this area in recent years.
The option list contains about a million items, among them sports seats with very prominent side bolsters on the cushions. You’ll love them in fast driving; not so much when you catch your bum on them getting in or out of the vehicle.
One greatly appreciated feature is that the steering wheel controls for the transmission are now proper paddles — right to upshift, left to downshift — instead of those ridiculous little thumb buttons. These are now optional on all Porsche models; BMW please copy for the Z4 roadster.
Cayenne’s increased wheelbase all goes into rear-seat legroom, a notable weak point of the outgoing car. The rear seat has 160 mm of fore-and-aft adjustment, and the seat back reclines in three discrete positions for optimum comfort, or folds flat for maximum cargo carrying capacity.
The weight savings net to some 180 kg on the naturally aspirated V8 “S” version; features and equipment added to the new car would have tacked on another 70 kg, so in effect the loss is a remarkable 250 kg.
Of this, 66 kg came from the chassis and body, thanks largely from lighter-weight materials, yet the structure is some 10 per cent stiffer in bending and torsion than before.
Another 63 kg results from the elimination of the two-speed transfer case — no more low range for serious off-roading.
Then again, who subjects a Cayenne to such treatment?
The new eight-speed Tiptronic automatic transmission (up from six) offers two overdrive ratios for more efficient highway cruising, and a lower overall first gear for more difficult conditions.
Porsche says that for driving on “spongy” surfaces (snow, muddy tracks, etc.) or trailer towing, the new Cayenne is at least the equal of its predecessor. We took an S onto Porsche’s off-road circuit near its factory on a reclaimed military proving grounds here in the former GDR, and while the surface had dried from recent rains there’s no way anyone is going to subject any Porsche to these hills, ruts and rocks, which this thing handled with ease.
The drive train also incorporates a stop-start function, a major contributor to fuel savings in urban driving.
Porsche’s active all-wheel drive system is generally rear-biased for a sportier drive, and can distribute up to 100 per cent of the driving torque to the rear axle.
Like the newer Audis, Cayenne also offers “torque vectoring,” which can drive the outer rear wheel faster than the inner to increase stability in high-speed cornering.
The Porsche Active Suspension Management System (PASM) continues to offer driver-selectable Sport and Comfort modes. Chief engineer Michael Leiters is quite proud to say that even in Sport, the ride is better than last year’s Comfort mode.
Five engines are available in Cayenne.
A 240-horsepower gasoline 3.6-litre V6 is the only one that comes with a manual transmission, a six-speed. The eight-speed Tiptronic is optional here and standard everywhere else.
A 3.0-litre Diesel (which we don’t get, sad to say), and 4.8-litre non-turbo (400 hp) and twin-turbo (500 hp) V8s shared with Panamera are the other conventional powerplants.
The Hybrid is — technically at least, if not commercially — the most interesting of the new Cayenne family. A 333-horsepower 3.0-litre supercharged V6 engine borrowed from corporate cousin Audi is combined with a 47-horse synchronous electric motor.
The motor is fed from a nickel metal-hydride battery located under the floor of the cargo area. One of the objectives of the hybrid project was that it look no different, and be no less spacious, than the conventional models. Okay, you do lose the hidden underfloor storage area.
Like most hybrids, the Cayenne will start in electric mode, and switch to engine power as the driver’s right foot demands.
However, if you do run out of gas you’d better be no more than a couple of kilometres away from a filling station; that’s about its maximum range on battery power alone.
The Hybrid can also do something Porsche calls “sailing” — apparently because some of the engineers are parasailing fans. At speeds as high as 156 km/h (this is legal in a civilized country like Germany) the engine shuts itself off to reduce internal drag from friction.
I took a photo while peeking over my co-driver’s shoulder — not while I was driving — of the tachometer registering 0 r.p.m. with the digital speedo reading 156 km/h. The photo is a bit blurry but you gotta love the timing.
Again like most hybrids, the fuel consumption gains stem largely from the idle-stop feature, which shuts the engine off when the car is not moving (assuming no other demands are made, such as air conditioning, or the battery being low on charge).
Also like most hybrids, one of the major efficiency gains comes from the regenerative braking system which converts kinetic energy back into electrical energy. And like all hybrids, brake feel is compromised somewhat — the brakes have a slightly grabby and inconsistent feel.
Not into saving the earth? The S provides all the performance anyone could ever need.
“Want?” Well, that’s another issue. The Turbo is insanely fast, yet actually gets better fuel consumption than the former V6 model.
No V6 or Diesel versions were available for this test.
Despite my misgivings about the entire concept, I have to admit that the 2011 Cayenne represents genuine improvements in virtually every aspect. It looks better, goes better, weighs less, has more room and, thanks in part to Porsche Canada’s “currency adjustment” program, even costs less, at least on an equipment-adjusted basis.
Kudos to developers of an SUV?
Grudging, yes.
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