It is only when you reach a twisting road – rarely the environment of choice for high and heavy SUVs – that the Cayenne Turbo suddenly puts clear air between it an every other remotely similar car we’ve driven.
With the optional active anti-roll bars, the handling is little short of phenomenal for such a large, heavy car. At medium effort it displays dazzling body control on the most challenging roads; try harder and you’ll find a bizarre level of mechanical grip followed by the steady onset of mild understeer.
On the road, that’s as far as you’re likely to get. And while we accept that on-track behaviour is irrelevant for a car such as this, we don’t feel we can leave it un-noted that on a circuit, if you use a trailing throttle into a quick curve to kill the understeer, this vast barge of an SUV drifts beautifully. Perhaps the most extraordinary statistic of all is that on our wet handling track, it went three seconds quicker than the 911 Turbo.
It even rides well, something we’re not used to saying about Cayennes. Whether this is also down to the roll bars or some other, undocumented tweak in the air suspension we cannot say. There’s still some wheel patter at low speeds in town, but at a motorway cruise or on quick country roads the car is suspended firmly yet never harshly, unless you press the sport button to stiffen the dampers further still.
Only the brakes disappoint. You’d think with bigger discs at each corner and Porsche’s unequalled reputation in this department that the Cayenne Turbo would be unimpeachable on this score, and if you look at the bald figures, it seems that it will stand on its nose with the best of them. However, what the bare statistics do not reveal is the long and mushy travel of the brake pedal, which is a long way from ideal for any SUV, let alone one making the promise borne by the shield of Stuttgart on its nose.