2022 Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT First Test: Has the Urus Met Its Match?

porsche cayenne Full Overview

Back in 2003, sports car drivers had to get used to the idea of yielding to faster-moving Porsche Cayennes coming up from behind them. The age of the performance SUV was upon us. Over the ensuing decade and a half, Porsche and others have refined the formula, creating a new class of super SUVs that’ll now surprise not just sports cars on a good back road but also the rare supercar. The new 2022 Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT takes that formula to the next level.

What Makes the Cayenne Turbo GT Tick?

At first glance, the Cayenne Turbo GT doesn’t appear all that different than the Cayenne Turbo Coupe. Meaner-looking, sure, thanks to wider air intakes in the nose, black accents, a carbon-fiber roof, and not one but two spoilers (the lower one is active, to boot)—but overall not all that different. Look even closer, and perhaps you’ll notice that the Cayenne Turbo GT sits about three-quarters of an inch lower than the Cayenne Turbo. It’s a sleeper of sorts.

Under the skin, things get even more interesting. For starters, the Cayenne Turbo’s familiar 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8 gets reworked, now breathing out of a titanium exhaust system. Power rises from 541 hp and 567 lb-ft in the standard Cayenne Turbo to a healthy 631 hp and 626 lb-ft of torque in the Cayenne Turbo GT—that’s just 10 horsepower and 1 lb-ft shy of the Lamborghini Urus, which shares its platform and engine with the Porsche. Helping put that power down is a quicker-shifting eight-speed automatic and a water-cooled torque-vectoring all-wheel drive system that’s beefier than the air-cooled unit on lesser Cayennes. Stiffer air springs, pizza-sized carbon-ceramic brakes, and a more aggressive four-wheel steering system round out the Turbo GT package.

How Fast Is the Cayenne Turbo GT?

The combo is good enough to make the Cayenne Turbo GT the second-quickest SUV MotorTrend has ever tested-with the competition so close we need to resort to a second decimal place to split the difference. The Porsche rips from 0 to 60 mph in 3.02 seconds and on through the quarter mile in 11.32 seconds at 120.93 mph. That just trails the last Urus we tested. It’s 2.97-second 0-60 run, combined with its 11.31-second at 120.06 mph quarter-mile performance was enough to make it the quickest SUV we’ve ever tested.

Still, the Porsche makes up some ground in braking and handling. The Cayenne Turbo GT stops from 60 mph in 105 feet (2 feet shorter than the Lamborghini), and it runs the figure eight in 23.2 seconds at 0.88 g average. That not only bests the Urus’ 23.5 second at 0.87 g performance but also shames quite a few sport sedans (like the BMW M3 Competition xDrive and Cadillac CT4 and CT5-V Blackwing) and sports cars (including Porsche’s own 911 Targa 4S and 718 Boxster and Cayman GTS 4.0).

Out in the real world, the Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT is more than just quick—it’s incredibly fun, too. Despite the 5,000 pounds the engine is lugging around, the fastback SUV feels light on its feet and properly fast. The V-8 makes gobs of power, and the eight-speed auto acts like Porsche’s famed PDK dual-clutch, backing up the V-8 bark with perfectly timed shifts each and every time. The fast, precise steering rack is “Porsche perfect with amazing feedback,” road test editor Chris Walton says, and it combines with the retuned all-wheel-drive system and big brakes to allow you to dive hard into corners and rocket hard out of them as the torque vectoring and four-wheel steering system combine to laugh in the face of physics.

Is there room for improvement? Sure. The stiffer suspension is, well, stiffer, on real-world pavement and can be borderline harsh. Some on staff also found the Cayenne to be so competent that it verged on boring. The Cayenne Turbo GT, in other words, feels a lot like an Urus for introverts—it’s nowhere near as loud and showy as the related Lambo is.

It’s nowhere near as expensive, either.

How Much Is a Cayenne Turbo GT?

We wouldn’t go so far as to call the 2022 Cayenne Turbo GT (which starts at $182,150 and as tested for $208,850) affordable, but it’s a shockingly good value for a super SUV. Consider its only true competitor on the performance spectrum, the Urus—it starts at nearly $220,000. The Bentley Bentayga Speed, meanwhile, starts at about $240,000 and lost to a “regular” Cayenne Turbo in our last comparison test. The Aston Martin DBX is about $180,000 to start but is slower than a Cayenne Turbo. The DBX S might be able to hang with the Turbo GT, but it’s likely to start north of $200,000. Meanwhile, neither BMW’s M division nor Mercedes-AMG offers a vehicle (not the M6 Competition or the GLE 63 Black Edition) that can dance with this Porsche.

The Verdict

Although the jury’s out on whether the Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT is better to drive than the Lamborghini Urus, fact is it may not matter. The Cayenne Turbo GT is one of the purest, most engaging, and most fun-to-drive SUVs to hit the road. Odds are as the super SUV segment evolves and grows, this will be remembered as one of the vehicles that first defined the segment.

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