Back to the 911 thing. If you get in a Cayenne and drive it up a winding mountain road like you'd drive a Carrera, you're going to end up one of two places: back at the bottom via the hard and fast route or augured into a slope. Hopefully you'd be able to figure that out once you're behind the wheel. There's no debating that this vehicle is big, heavy and sits significantly higher than your average sports car. Therefore, you should not get into the Cayenne and expect an experience like the one you may have had behind the wheel of one of the manufacturer's performance coupes. Rather, you ought to focus on appreciating it for what it is-a fast, thoroughly refined performance SUV engineered to make most others look downright silly-but not on what you think it should be simply because it wears a Porsche badge.
Maybe a better way to think of it is this: The Cayenne will deliver a comparatively sublime on-road experience, while still offering a competent off-road nature. It's definitely sporty and reasonably precise in a 5,000-pound kind of way, driving more like a car than a truck at speed. And of course it'll go places no other Porsche would dream of going. Considering this, it is perhaps the most widely appealing and capable vehicle Porsche has ever built, which could account for extremely ebullient sales in North America, producing numbers which have surpassed just about everyone's expectations (mostly those in the automotive press).
The Cayenne S engine has plenty...
The Cayenne S engine has plenty of torque on tap.
Quick Stats
Total mileage: 12,384
Fuel economy: 14.3 mpg
Thumbs up: Off-road utility, high-speed stability
Thumbs down: Thirsty V8, bland styling