PORSCHE’S Cayenne recently became the premium automaker’s first model diesel engine car. Not long ago, critics said it would never happen, pouring oily diesel into a Porsche.
And on the Cayenne’s arrival at the LA Show in 2003, many scoffed at the idea of a Porsche that was not a sports car, but the Cayenne all-roader stacked up the company profits, taking 50 percent of sales and giving Porsche enough cash to take control of the Volkswagen Group, which includes VW plus Audi, Seat, Skoda, Lamborghini, Bentley and Bugatti.
Cayenne is built in Leipzig and was planned as a joint venture with VW’s Touareg, and the latter was quickly equipped with a V6 three-litre diesel to offset the thirst and carbon emissions of a big 4x4.
Porsche said it was not interested in diesel for the Cayenne. It doesn’t make diesel engines these days. In the past few years diesel engines have dominated 4x4s, taking 80 percent of the luxury sector in Europe and 86 percent in Great Britain. Tougher petrol prices and CO2-based tax have made thirsty petrol 4x4 as popular as, well, a chocolate haggis.
Sales of new and old 4x4s have been diving anyway during the sudden shortage of money, as owners trying to offload them have discovered. Council estates are now awash with cut-price older 4x4s.
Porsche could have done with a diesel Cayenne before the fan of disquiet blew the manure heap across the manicured lawn that is public sensibility. Today, though, it does have a diesel Cayenne, using the VW V6 from the Touareg and Audi Q7. It is a fine engine in them and it is a fine engine in the Cayenne, rescuing owners from heavy petrol bills.
Porsche says it has adjusted the power delivery slightly to suit the Cayenne but agrees the changes are “not significant”. I suppose it would not do to put the VW/Audi motor into the more expensive Cayenne without claiming some changes?
The near four-figure premium for diesel is not unusual, but remember this is not a Porsche diesel, whereas the petrol V6 is thoroughly Porsche and in that sense is better value. The two models look the same except for diesel-related details in the instrumentation.