An all-terrain vehicle? Until well into the late 1990s, such an eventuality seemed far from appropriate for the Porsche world. “Hardly anyone could imagine that our brand would expand the sports car segment into the SUV realm,” recalls Klaus-Gerhard Wolpert, the first Vice President of the Cayenne model line.
And yet 20 years ago, it did indeed happen – and it was a triumph. The Porsche legend was successfully transferred to a completely new market segment. A confident off-roader, luxurious travel companion and at the same time a highly emotive sports car – the Cayenne’s recipe for success is the same today.
With entrepreneurial foresight, typical Porsche attention to detail and the highest quality standards, the sports car manufacturer embarked on the project, code-named ‘Colorado’, at the tail end of the 1990s. In order to meet the brand’s exacting performance standards in the SUV segment as well, engineers developed a new V8 engine for the Cayenne that would deliver maximum power and torque figures: in the Cayenne S, the 4.5-litre engine produced 250 kW (340 PS) and 420 Nm. With the same displacement, the Cayenne Turbo served up an even more impressive 331 kW (450 PS) and 620 Nm. The result was sports-car-level performance characteristics such as top speeds of 242 and 266 km/h, respectively.
From the ground up, the V8 engine was designed to enable all components to handle even more extreme stresses with ease. And this was just as well as, four years after the Cayenne’s debut, the ante was upped yet again for the Hemmingen-developed model line. The year 2006 saw the launch of the Cayenne Turbo S, which became the second most powerful road-approved Porsche at the time, behind only the Carrera GT super sports car.
The full story is available at Porsche newsroom here
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