Porsche Macan T 2023 review

The T-spec 911 is the best Carrera you can buy, so does the same letter applied to the Macan also mark out a new range high point?

Evo rating

Price

from £55,800

• All the usual Porsche dynamic qualities

• With none of the performance

Porsche’s Macan remains a benchmark small SUV. It’s not a car to flutter the hearts of evo readers, nor will it be the first choice for one of those drives we all lock away to be resurfaced when someone asks why driving matters. But like Alfa Romeo’s Stelvio it is a vehicle that’s clearly been engineered and developed by those prepared to go the extra mile and create a car worthy of the heritage its badge carries.

Even in its twilight years – the Macan was launched nine years ago and has nearly 12 months to go before its all-electric replacement arrives – it still sets the benchmark for ride and handling, body control and feedback, and feeling like a Porsche hot hatch rather than a flat-footed crossover. As a daily to accompany something more exciting in the garage, a Macan is a wise choice.

Although, it does depend on which Macan we’re discussing. Anything with a six-cylinder turbo engine will see you right; they’re all seven-speed PDK equipped but the mix works well and the pace and performance match the expectations. We’d go for a GTS but an S is just fine, too. We wouldn’t walk on by a used diesel either. Which leaves the four-cylinder petrol models.

When launched in 2014 the four-cylinder Macan was rarer than an order slot on a GT3 RS. You could have one, but wouldn’t you prefer a six-cylinder Porsche to one powered by a VW Golf GTI engine? It turns out that a great many customers did. In recent years that’s changed, with the EA888-engined Macan’s entry-level attractiveness being pushed by Porsche. To the extent that another trim has been added, the T.

Its 2-litre four-cylinder single-turbo engine remains unchanged from the base Macan’s, with 261bhp and 295lb ft available to haul 1865kg around with the aid of a seven-speed double-clutch gearbox and four-wheel drive. However, the T does have the Sport Chrono Package as standard, adding drive modes, Sport Response (which, at the push of a button, heightens the engine and transmission’s responses for 20 seconds) and launch control. Adaptive damping is also standard and the car sits 15mm lower and gains a selection of exterior trim finished in Agate Grey. For all of these extras, Porsche charges a premium of £5000.

So far so good. The less good bit is that, like the regular four-cylinder Macan, the T could be politely described as lacking the performance befitting of a Porsche. Regardless of the drive mode selected the throttle response is a little glacial to say the least, the seven ratios working overtime to shuffle around the power and fill in the torque shortfalls. It is, frankly, a little breathless, and even when up to speed it’s quite slow to respond to any requests for some more get up and go. With the power-to-weight ratio of a well-endowed supermini but none of the lightweight pep, it’s not hard to understand the performance challenges the T faces.

Which is a shame because all the other strong attributes of the Macan are there in abundance. It steers with a directness no rival can touch, its body control feels more Golf GTI than jacked-up crossover and it exudes the damping quality and polish that Porsche’s engineers tirelessly slave over to perfect.

Compared with today’s £50,000-plus hatchbacks (the Macan T is £55,800) there’s a quality about its interior that a Golf R can’t get close to and a sense that you are in something a cut above the volume sellers – even though the Macan accounted for more than a third of all Porsche sales last year with over 88,000 examples sold. However, compared with the Macan S, the T doesn’t get out of the starting blocks.

For an additional one-thousand pounds you can buy a six-cylinder Macan S, and you get far more for your money than an extra pair of cylinders. It’s more powerful by a sizable 114bhp, has 88lb ft more torque, and despite weighing an additional 65kg is considerably quicker, too. Not just against the stopwatch but in every situation that’s relevant to road driving. And while it may be thirstier than the four-pot T by a margin of 2mpg, the S’s larger reserves of performance result in you driving it in a calmer, more efficient manner, but no slower.

It’s incredibly rare for Porsche to drop the ball but the Macan T feels like a model conceived in a creative ideas session by people who haven’t grasped what makes a Porsche a Porsche. After the scintillating brilliance of the 911 Carrera T, the Macan T feels like an opportunity missed to have some fun with the petrol models before they are replaced with battery-powered equivalents. Because even if you only buy it for the kudos of owning a Porsche, the Macan T isn’t going to provide you with the experience you are expecting.

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