Test driving the flagship Porsche Cayenne

The first thing to acknowledge when sizing up Porsche’s full-size SUV is that it’s here to make serious money. Just like the Macan we tested earlier this year, the Cayenne is a market leader for Porsche, turned out of its sprawling Leipzig plant by the freighter load to meet massive demand from the mighty core markets of China and the US.
 
The second thing to remember is that Porsche’s use of hybrid drive in its Panamera and Cayenne ranges is both a necessary route to reducing overall fleet emissions and a means of marketing green tech in a way that better aligns with the brand’s sporting image. So hybrid in a Porsche can, and does, spell flagship performance as much as low-emission motoring.
 
You might surmise from all this that the Cayenne Turbo S E-Hybrid is a fairly cynical product, and you might be right. Can a 2.5-tonne SUV ever really be a performance car? And isn’t using hybrid technology for performance gains in a family-oriented luxury lifestyle vehicle slightly missing the point?