There is something charming and perhaps even a little disarming about the sheer, unbridled hubris of these Porsche boys. And I say "boys" because amongst the development engineers and corporate overseers at Porsche, I cannot recall meeting a single woman.
Bernard Maier, global head of sales and marketing, exudes the joyous self-confidence of Porsche types and he does it with a warm smile and a friendly pat on the back.
"The Cayenne is an example of how Porsche is always inventing itself anew, yet always remaining true to itself," he says in an interview about the updated 2015 Cayenne appearing in the Porsche magazine, 368 Christophorus.
The Cayenne, he goes on to say, is a sports car disguised as a premium SUV. As such, it's a mass of contradictions that make perfect Porsche sense: tradition and innovation; performance and everyday user-friendliness; style and functionality; exclusivity and social acceptance.
"All that combined with a lot of driving pleasure," he adds, without a hint of humility. Yet in the many times I have met and interviewed Maier, he remains utterly genial, thoroughly amusing and supremely well-mannered. If Porsche and its cars are rolling contradictions, then so are the Porsche people.
Here in northeastern Spain, in Catalonia, I am surrounded by Porsche engineers and product planners. We're here for a deep dive into this most important of Porsche – the SUV introduced in 2002 that truly saved the company financially, thus allowing Porsche to continue to build sports cars like the 911 Carrera, Boxster and Cayman.
Cayenne product manager Frank Vollmer calls the Cayenne the car in which "You can do everything you need to do and perhaps with a little gusto."
In the last dozen years, Porsche has sold nearly 600,000 Cayennes. It's been a smash hit. But one tenet at Porsche is this commitment to constant updates and reinvention of all its product lines. The Cayenne has not had a total makeover, but when it rolls into dealerships this October, the Porsche sales people will be able to boast of more power, better fuel economy, tweaks to the sheet metal, chassis upgrades and even a plug-in hybrid version coming later, after its late September introduction at the Paris auto show.
The completely overhauled rear end is perhaps the clearest visual signal that something is new with the Cayenne. And the driving…
Well, this morning I spent several hours behind the wheel of a Turbo model capable of 0-100 km/hour in less than four seconds. This afternoon I plan to take that same Turbo off-roading, slicing and dicing some very nasty terrain.
More on the total driving experience is coming to Globe Drive.
If you have questions about driving or car maintenance, please contact our experts at globedrive@globeandmail.com.
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