A totally pointless addition to the automotive landscape. Or the Porsche you’ve been waiting years for. Which way you swing – and we hardly suspect you dwell in the middle – will depend on how you view the modern phenomenon of the SUV coupe.
It’s a minor miracle it took Porsche until the Cayenne’s third generation to add one to the line-up. While not quite the pioneer of the posh performance SUV movement, the Stuttgart firm was certainly a proponent of it. But the Coupe has had a thorough refresh alongside its more practical sibling (now dubbed the Cayenne SUV) and is fighting fit in a perplexingly bustling marketplace.
All subjective baggage should probably be left at the door; the sheer sales figures and profit margins achieved by chamfering off your 4×4’s roofline and sportifying its looks cannot be argued with, no matter how much of an enthusiast brand you are. Which isn’t to say Porsche hasn’t employed its spin department in an effort to win us luddites offer nonetheless. ‘The design takes up the iconic silhouette of the 911,’ apparently. We’ll let you make your own mind up on how successfully that’s been achieved.
Details, please.
The rear accommodation comprises a pair of sculpted sports seats as standard, but you can spec a three-seat bench if you need it. The roof is vast panoramic glass but can be switched to sculptured carbon if you’re worried about a drastically raised centre of gravity (as part of an £11,000 package, mind you). Beyond that there’s a dizzying array of chassis and tech options to spend hours of your time (and thousands of your pounds) configuring online, many of them designed to shortcut the dynamic penalties a car so big and heavy can’t help but incur. On which note, it’s a weeny bit heavier than a regularly roofed Cayenne.
What’s under the bonnet?
Power comes from a mix of turbocharged petrol powertrains, some of them hybridised and all shared with the Cayenne SUV. All get a standard eight-speed automatic gearbox that’s better prepared for towing than Porsche’s usual PDK, too.
There are two pure petrols in the shape of the £73k, 348bhp V6-powered Cayenne and £88k, 468bhp V8-powered Cayenne S. But if you’re on something resembling a company car scheme – or simply want to appease your conscience when bimbling around town – the three hybrids are likely more appealing. Two come with V6s – the £82k, 464bhp Cayenne E-Hybrid and £90k, 512bhp Cayenne S E-Hybrid, which also gets plusher air suspension as standard.
But the headlines go to the frankly mad £133k, 729bhp Cayenne Turbo E-Hybrid. It pairs the same 172bhp electric motor and 25.9kWh battery as those other hybrids to a twin-turbo V8 for 0-62mph in comfortably under four seconds. Not least if you’ve spent another twenty grand on the optional GT package, exclusive to the Coupe.
Wait, what happened to the Turbo GT?
See, tightening emission regulations mean Porsche can no longer sell its motorsport department Cayenne Turbo GT in Europe, so as a halfway house we get a similar dynamic makeover – lower suspension, wider tracks, gnarlier front camber and so much RaceTex faux-suede inside you could have retrimmed your living room with it – that also happens to slice 100kg from the kerbweight. Alright, it’s still a 2.5-tonne car, but it does cut the 0-62mph time to 3.6 seconds. Slower than the old Turbo GT, would you believe. But with the ability to go 50 miles on pure electric power, this is more of an all-rounder.
Our choice from the range
PORSCHE
Turbo E-Hybrid 5dr Tiptronic S
£132,600
What's the verdict?
“Objectively, this is a stupendous achievement, another large, very heavy SUV that genuinely drives with sports car (ish) vigour”
Objectively, this is a stupendous achievement, another large, very heavy SUV that genuinely drives with sports car (ish) vigour. Subjectively? That’s your call. If the swelling ranks of low-slung SUVs haven’t grotesquely offended you then this could be the Cayenne you’ve been waiting for.
Its existence is as vain as you might imagine – a Cayenne that’s more expensive, less roomy and not tangibly sharper to drive in real-world conditions. While the Panamera Sport Turismo justifies its price premium over standard with a genuine surge in practicality, the Cayenne Coupe appears to attempt the opposite. But if you get this class of car, that’ll hardly matter one jot. All with the added bonus of being able to buy one with some Porsche GT department knowhow shovelled into it. Told you it was silly.
Mercedes-Benz GLE
£57,930 – £113,805
Jaguar F-Pace
£40,265 – £99,130
Audi Q8
£65,675 – £102,370
Continue reading: Driving
Driving
What is it like to drive?
While the Coupe gets a wider track and different aero over a standard Cayenne, it also weighs a bit more, so any changes over its more practical sibling are probably only made clear by driving them both back-to-back. And very enthusiastically, at that. In short, this feels just like a Cayenne always has, which is to say a freakishly deft car for its size and easily one of the most driver-appeasing SUVs on sale.
With a big caveat. Quite a lot of the crucial tech that Porsche has deployed to tease such agility out of an oversized car is optional, with rear-wheel steering a frankly rude £1,325 extra. Without it, the Cayenne feels every bit of its two tonnes and enormous girth, but the way it tucks into turns and resists understeer with the RWS options box ticked is staggering. If you’re driving one of the quicker ones keenly you’ll need the much pricier carbon ceramic brakes, too. Without them you’ll be far too aware of each and every one of this car’s numerous kilos after only a few corners.
Which engine is best?
If you want to fully dig into the Cayenne Coupe’s lavish excess, you’ll need the top-spec Turbo E-Hybrid. A V8 just sounds and feels correct in a car of this heft and its heroic levels of torque (700lb ft from barely above tickover thanks to the e-boost) plus the overlaying of muscle car rumble is joyously childish in a car so broad-shouldered. If you want to experience the thuggish, occasionally oversteery nature the very best performance SUVs exhibit, the Turbo is undoubtedly the one to have.
Yep, it really will oversteer, but it’s a well-balanced, progressive car driven quickly and only begins to shake its hips if you go looking for it. Whether pottering along or pretending it’s a 959 Paris-Dakar, however, it remains the bona fide performance SUV when it comes to handling, even when carrying the 2.5-tonne timber of its hybrid system. So much so, we reckon the optional GT package is superfluous.
That’s probably the point – the riotous excess of answering a question no sensible person posed in the first place. Trying the Turbo with and without the pack, on road and track, we preferred the smoother reactions and broader remit of the ‘stock’ car, but there’s undeniable appeal to the sheer madness of the GT setup. It doesn’t exhibit the sheer character of its Turbo GT predecessor, and Porsche’s engineers admit they’re not directly replacing a car now killed off by European emissions regs – merely sharpening the hybrid that must play its role instead.
And if I want something less crazed?
Of course, most buyers will shop further down the range. If you’re not a business user and can’t plug in at home then the Cayenne S – now back to a V8 with this facelift – offers a real sweet spot in the range. Otherwise the S E-Hybrid offers as much pace as you could ever realistically require while offering plush air suspension and the 39g/km CO2 emissions that’ll add up nicely as a company car, not least because its 56 miles of emissions-free driving ought to cover most of our commutes.
Across the engine range, though, the love that Porsche lavishes on every one of its cars is evident. The steering is absurdly communicative for a car of such scale. The brakes too are progressive and communicative in a way many owners may never fully appreciate, the pedal telling you so much about the grip underfoot as you heave into a turn. It’s especially impressive given the hybrids can now recuperate energy for longer, gaining regen right down to 1.2mph (where they previously stopped just shy of 9mph).
Alright, a purely ICE version will have sharper pedal response. And the brakes wilted with inadvertent speed when Porsche let us out on track, even in a carbon-ceramic equipped GT. But neither issue will be writ large during the real-world pottering that most SUVs succumb to.
Previous: Overview
Continue reading: Interior
Interior
What is it like on the inside?
Worried the sloping roofline will sever headroom in the back? Porsche has lowered the back seats by 30mm, even though the roof has only dropped 20mm. Worried the aerodynamic profile’s gone skew-whiff? Porsche has added another rear spoiler, so as well as the roof there’s now an active device on the tailgate. Told you the engineering was exhaustive.
But while the Panamera’s Sport Turismo variant brought space alongside its svelter looks, the opposite has happened here. Headroom does present itself as an issue for anyone measuring six feet or more, who’ll find their hair brushing the ceiling in a way it doesn’t in the back of a standard Cayenne. For anyone else, it should be cavernous. The total boot capacity is down almost 200 litres, though at 1,344 litres with the seats down, even the hybrids remain pretty roomy. Just with a fairly high floor for loading stuff onto.
If you want five seats, you can’t have the carbon roof, which only comes as part of an incongruously named ‘Lightweight Sport Package’ that shaves negligible kilos from a two-tonne-plus SUV.
In fact, trim and colour options are dizzying, with Race-Tex, leather and carbon seemingly ready to be draped alternately across every surface bar the windows. You even get a 911 R-esque houndstooth cloth pattern in the middle of the seats if you’ve specced the lightweight pack. Y’know, just to really stick two fingers up to the purists. It does look damn good, mind, especially with the suede-effect GT steering wheel before it.
The third-gen Cayenne’s big mid-life update has taken an already techy interior further into the world of touchscreens, the headlines being a) the loss of an analogue rev-counter as digital dials gobble up all the instrumentation and b) the somewhat OTT option of an additional display screen for the passenger. It allows them to fiddle with apps and stream TV without distracting the driver, but the protective film capable of such witchcraft also makes the display oddly unsharp and a little nauseous to glare at for too long (at least for us). Maybe a few more hours staring at their phone will suffice. On which note, those can be charged quickly inside a specially cooled compartment.
Previous: Driving
Continue reading: Buying
Buying
What should I be paying?
Each Cayenne Coupe is roughly three grand more than its equivalent SUV. Speccing one looks complex enough to give anyone a headache – before you’ve even begun to ponder gold door stickers or Deep Sea Blue 22in wheels regardless of exterior colour (yes, really).
Once you’ve decided which of its half-dozen powertrain options to choose from – the halo Turbo more than doubling the power of the base car – it’s time to work out whether you want four or five seats, the latter unable to be twinned with that Lightweight Sport Package (and its carbon roof and natty houndstooth trim). But if you’re thinking of occasionally carrying an extra person then also carting around the 22kg that kit saves will hardly be a concern.
Porsche remains stingy with options. Even on the mighty £154k GT package car you’ll have to pay another £1,325 for rear-axle steering, a chief component to making big ol’ cars handle well. Isn’t it wild they’d put all that effort into widening tracks and cutting 100kg from the thing to then let you skip four-wheel steer? Ceramic brakes are mercifully standard on the GT, but a seven grand option elsewhere. We’d skip the two grand sports exhaust option on all engines – Porsche makes such decent powertrains in the first place, their aural appeal doesn’t need an artificial boost.
As for living with one? Well, the hybrids claim up to 56 miles on electric power alone, which is more useful than a number of rivals – the somewhat flawed Mercedes-AMG GLC63 offers just seven miles. It’s all thanks to an improved battery (up from 17.9 to 25.9kWh) and motor (up from 134 to 172bhp) with the Mk3’s facelift.
The 130kg battery isn’t actually any larger physically – the Cayenne remains on its existing platform – but more efficient cells have yielded a more useable fully electric range in the real world. It’ll now charge faster, too; under two and a half hours from flat to full on an 11kW charger. Allow an extra hour on a 7kW home wall box.
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