FirstDrive/Porsche Cayenne GTS:Some cars are always worth testing, says Conor Twomey, and the new Porsche Cayenne GTS certainly didn't disappoint.
With over 250 individual cars launched this year, we hard-working hacks have to choose our events carefully, and attend only the launches that have meanginful significance to the Irish market. There just isn't enough time in the day, or healthy cells in the liver, to go to every junket we're invited to attend.
Of course, when Porsche called up and asked if I'd like to drive an existing car with a new bodykit and a few more horsepower, I immediately said yes. True, the Porsche Cayenne GTS won't sell in enormous numbers in Ireland but you simply never give up a chance to drive a Porsche - even a huge Porsche SUV.
Indeed, the Cayenne is actually one of Porsche's more entertaining cars because while you expect a Boxster or a 911 to be darty and agile, the experience of carving up mountain roads in a 2.2-tonne off-roader is both awe inspiring and massively amusing, made all the more impressive by the fact that you can then raise the optional air suspension, engage the low-ratio transfer case and go bounding across terrain so rugged it would give a mountain goat the shivers. No car quite shatters one's conceptions like a Porsche Cayenne.
The new Cayenne in question is the GTS, based on the 4.8-litre Cayenne S, but with 20 more horsepower, a neat bodykit, sport exhaust, a lowered and stiffer suspension with adaptive shock absorbers, 21-inch alloy wheels and a raft or minor changes to make the GTS stand out as the sportiest, if not the fastest, Cayenne in the range. Priced at around €120,000 when it goes on sale next February, the GTS helps plug the significant gap between the 385hp, €101,700 Cayenne S and the 500hp, €164,400 Cayenne Turbo.
The styling modifcations and huge wheels mean the GTS is easily the best-looking car in the range, but even if you struggle to see the beauty in the Cayenne, there's no denying it's simply heaving with purpose aggression. Inside, it's much more soothing, with a simple, elegant dashboard, deeply impressive quality and special sports seats, front and rear, to set the GTS apart from lesser models.
The launch also afforded us the rare oppurtunity to sample a manual Cayenne which, perhaps unsurprisingly, turned out to be the most enjoyable of all the Cayennes to drive, Turbo included. With no torque converter to soften the throttle repsonse and a positive, slick gearbox, the manual GTS proved to be astonishingly responsive to driver inputs and so incredibly tactile and talkative that we soon forgot what we were in a rather large SUV.
The only aspects of the Cayenne GTS's dynamics which disappointed were the brakes, which worked well enough, but which required a lot of confidence-denting pedal effort.
Despite this, I couldn't help but be impressed by the GTS. Of all the 250 cars launched in 2007, it's one of the least significant in terms of raw sales figures, but in every other respect it's easily one of the most surprising.
The Porsche Cayenne GTS is proof, if any was needed, of why you simply never pass up an opportunity to drive a Porsche. Stuttgart's finest will leave you gobsmacked every single time.
Factfile
ENGINE:4.8-litre V8
POWER:405hp @ 6,500rpm
TORQUE:500Nm @ 3,500rpm
TRANSMISSION:Six-speed manual, all-wheel drive
0-100km/h: 6.1 seconds
TOP SPEED:253km/h
CO2: 361g/km
ECONOMY:
15.1L/100km
WEIGHT:2,225kg
STANDARD EQUIPMENT:GTS bodykit, 21-inch alloy wheels, sports suspension, active dampers, climate control, sports seats, Xenon headlamps
BOOT CAPACITY:
540-litres
PRICE:€120,000 (est)