The New Porsche Cayenne

I was never a fan of the old Cayennes, not because I was Porsche purist and was upset that they had built an SUV, but because I thought they looked ugly. This new third generation Cayenne, on the other hand, is so hot looking which is why I got in touch with Porsche and asked them to borrow the car for the weekend.

Even before driving this third generation Cayenne I was pushing it off on friends. Anybody with a budget of around 30K I would quickly recommend the new Cayenne because it had two very important things going for it, a great looking exterior as well as a very modern looking interior. And, because the car just came out, you know this current look is going to be around for at least the next 7 years.

The model I picked up for the review was the “entry-level” Porsche Cayenne. After spending a weekend with this standard Cayenne I can tell you, you don’t need the faster Cayenne S or Turbo versions. The standard Cayenne with 340HP is no slouch which is what I was expecting it to be. The S version adds another 100HP on top of the standard Cayenne power and the Turbo version adds 200HP, but if you’re on a limited budget, get the standard Cayenne and use the money saved to fill it up with options. The car handled like you’d expect a Porsche to handle, it was very comfortable on bumpy roads but also stiff enough on fast hard turns. When I posted my Lexus LC500 review last week, a reader suggested I should test the cars by running them up and down the Crystal Tower parking lot so I decided to do just that for this review, as an agility test. If you don’t know the Crystal Tower parking lot, its known for being incredibly tight and people tend to scrape both sides of their cars going up and down the ramps. So I decided to have a bit of fun and mounted three GoPro’s to the Cayenne and decided to go up and down the lot to see how it handled tight turns. It passed! I think next time I should run the test when the parking is full since if the floors are empty it’s actually not that hard to maneuver through the floors.

The interior of the new Cayenne is another place it really shines. I personally think the Range Rover Velar raised the bar pretty high for slick and futuristic looking interiors but the new Cayenne manages to do that as well. The new Cayenne has a pretty huge screen with a really great looking infotainment system that also includes Apple’s CarPlay, but that’s just part of what makes the interior look so modern. The physical buttons in the center console area have now been replaced with backlit buttons and digital screens that are now touch sensitive. The whole center console looks like a giant screen and this helps give the interior such a modern look. Moving to the back the rear passengers have excellent legroom as well as having modern amenities like USB ports. The trunk is also pretty big and the rear seats fold down to make it even bigger but oddly enough, there are no controls in the trunk to automatically fold down the rear seats. I couldn’t find the option to add them either on the Porsche site which is bizarre because this is a pretty expensive car so you’d expect this pretty basic option.

Which brings us to the price. The starting price of the Cayenne is KD24,600 and I know this is going to sound weird, but that’s actually a pretty good deal. I would have expected the car to start much higher so I was pleasantly surprised when I found out how much they cost. 30,000 would get you a Cayenne S but as I mentioned earlier, I’d use the money saved going with the standard Cayenne to add all the options you want and there are A LOT of options to choose from. One of my favorite things about Porsche is how you can configure and build your own car on their website. Their online configurator allows you to spec the car the way you want it while showing you the exact cost, and then you can take your build to the dealership and just order it. I tend to build a Porsche maybe once every couple of weeks just for fun (don’t ask) and the Cayenne I built with all the options I wanted came out to around 31,000 which isn’t that bad.

So yeah I pretty much loved the car. I think like all Porsches the biggest issue with the Cayenne is that it’s going to end up being too popular and so you’ll start seeing a ton of them on the roads. If you want to check the car out and take it for a test drive you can as well, just head to the dealer and book a drive. Also make sure you check out the Porsche car configurator [Here]