Porsche Cayenne Turbo S review

Cayenne Turbo S 1 Are your bathroom fittings solid gold? Do you frequently pop over to Tokyo for a lunchtime sushi fix in your private jet? Do you have a wine collection worth millions of dollars housed in a subterranean cellar?

If that describes your freewheeling oligarch lifestyle, then Porsche would like you to step right this way for its range-topping sports utility vehicle, the Cayenne Turbo S. Positioned above even the rarefied Cayenne Turbo, your pockets will need to be exceptionally deep to have the privilege of putting this car in your driveway.

The uber-Cayenne costs $804,678, which is nearly 30 percent more than the Cayenne Turbo’s eye-watering $633,978 price tag.

What you get for that rather heady premium is a power upgrade for the 4.8-litre twin-turbo V8 (which now produces 570bhp and 800Nm – up 50bhp and 50Nm from the Turbo), carbon-ceramic brakes, 21-inch wheels and a full suite of Porsche’s be-acronymed electronics (torque vectoring and active roll stabilisation, among other go-faster goodies). Of course, you could have most of the above on a Cayenne Turbo, but it would cost more.

And no matter how many options a “standard” Cayenne Turbo has, it doesn’t have the snob appeal of the Turbo S badge, something reserved for the pinnacle models in the Porsche vehicle family.

While a $170,000 premium is a frightening amount of money, you could check off even more things from the carmaker’s bountiful options list if you’re so inclined. This includes a rortier-sounding exhaust system ($11,574), adaptive cruise control ($7698) or even painted slats for the air-con vents ($5761).

This could inflate its asking price to even more ridiculous levels, but if you can even contemplate taking a second look at the Cayenne Turbo S without your wallet imploding in psychic sympathy, you probably have a net worth equivalent to the GDP of a small country. This should put you above piffling financial concerns, which should mean you would want to know what a 570bhp super-SUV feels like.

In a nutshell, it is at once curiously undramatic and an absolute firecracker. It is undramatic because the cabin’s superlative sound insulation and adaptive air-filled dampers do a remarkably good job of isolating its occupants from the vagaries of the outside world.

At cruising speeds, there’s the barest of purrs from the mighty V8, its cabin is deathly quiet (all the better to hear the standard 14-speaker Bose sound system), and the ride is silky smooth, dismissing uneven surfaces with ease.

Cayenne Turbo S Cockpit In fact, if you don’t provoke the weapons-grade engine of this automobile, you’d be forgiven for thinking it has no more performance potential than the entry-level Cayenne that’s equipped with a 300bhp 3.6-litre V6.

But with the mere flex of your right foot, you could shatter that serenity, because the throttle seems like it is hooked up to a nuclear device. This is only a slight exaggeration because, thanks to the supercar-grade engine in the Turbo S, it will dispatch the century sprint in a supercar-bashing 4.1 seconds and go on to reach a top speed of 284km/h.

Porsche says the Turbo S will also do the standing quarter-mile sprint in 12.4 seconds, and complete a lap of the fearsome Nurburgring Nordschleife in 7 minutes 59 seconds. If you need a frame of reference, the 918 Spyder hypercar does the same benchmarks in 10 seconds, and 6 minutes 57 seconds respectively.

Cayenne Turbo S Wheel Tempting though it may be, we could not fully verify these figures during our test-drive in Sweden, for sub-zero temperatures, icy roads and a ludicrously powerful car make for uncomfortable bedfellows. But what we can tell you is that it can satisfy even the most power-crazed.

In spite of all that, and while this automobile may look like a supercar on paper, a vehicle weighing in the region of 2.2 tonnes is not something you would want to sling about like the other Turbo S in the Porsche line-up, the 911.

Which begs the question: What is the point of the Cayenne Turbo S anyway?

Cayenne Turbo S Meter The more cynical will point to how it is merely a Cayenne Turbo with a fancier badge and some of the model’s tastier optional bits now included as standard. Or how even though it is capable of a frightening turn of speed, most of its owners will have neither the appetite nor the ability to exploit its performance potential. And we haven’t yet gotten to the hideously large price tag, which is money you could well use to buy yourself a bona fide supercar.

But, seen from the perspective of the super-rich, for whom buying anything less than top of the line would amount to a severe loss of face at the golf club, the Cayenne Turbo S, mind-bendingly excessive though it may be, makes perfect sense.

Cayenne Turbo S Rear