Category: Sporting 4x4s 
Price Range: £36,801 to £75,137
Astonishing on-road performance for a 4x4, handling to match, yet very capable off-road. Well made from expensive materials, the V6 looks affordable
Ride is too firm, and it's hard to come to terms with a Porsche-badged 4x4
The most controversial Porsche ever brings two worlds into collision, but without destroying either of them.
Great seats, a multiply-adjustable driving position and very effective air-con make for a comfortable driving environment, but there's one major snag. The ride is very firm on the S's standard coil springs, with ridges and lumps in the road sending thumps and shocks into the cabin. The optional air suspension (standard in the Turbo) improves things, but really you need to set it to Comfort for tolerable suppleness on anything other than a perfect road surface. The adaptive dampers can still react quickly enough to give a taut cornering feel, so Comfort doesn't spoil the sportiness. Normal or Sports are best kept for the sort of road surfaces normal in Germany but all too rare in the UK. You can always hear the engine note, which is fine because both versions of the V8 sound wonderful. Even the V6 has been tuned to emit an inspirational exhaust note. Other extraneous noises are low except for those road thumps. This wide car - well over six feet - can fit three passengers across its rear seat, and all have plenty of leg and headroom. There's similarly ample space in the front, but the raked-back windscreen co-exists uneasily with the high seating position and it's easy to knock your headon the edge of the door aperture when getting in. Unlike, say, the Volvo XC90, the Cayenne neither has removable rear seats nor an extra row in the back, but the seats do split/fold in typical estate-car fashion. Stowage space is plentiful, including cupholders and an air-conditioned glovebox. Standard equipment is a 10-speaker CD radio, but the Turbo gets 'Porsche Communication Management' which adds sat-nav, a trip computer and an optional phone, all controlled via direct-acting buttons, minimal menus and a 6.5in screen, all wired together with fibre-optics. There's a CD stacker, but you can also insert a music CD into the navigation CD-ROM drive in the facia unit once the route has been calculated, because the system will retain the instructions in its memory. The Turbo also has a Bose 360-degree surround sound stereo, with a 100W subwoofer in the spare wheel well and 13 other subwoofers, woofers and tweeters. Just one snag: the male voice for the sat-nav is an irritating mix of officiousness and obsequiousness, some of its instructions are ambiguous, and it repeats then unnecessarily. At least you can change the voice to a better female one.
