GTS is enhanced to suit its new status as Europe’s hottest non-hybrid Cayenne
MATT SAUNDERS @thedarkstormy1
TESTED 11.6.24, STUTTGART, GERMANY ON SALE NOW
If Porsche’s upper-mid-range, gently warmed GTS derivatives have a fault, perhaps it’s that they can sometimes feel less like performance models in their own right and more like rebranded combinations of just the right optional extras. Glorified trim levels, you might say.
Circumstance has seen to it that you can’t say this about the new Cayenne GTS, however. With the range-topping Turbo GT not being on sale in Europe any longer, this becomes the fastest non-hybrid Cayenne in the line-up. That fact could give it fresh interest from private buyers of more traditional tastes who don’t see the sense in carting around nearly 400kg of extra ballast in a Turbo E-Hybrid that they will seldom charge up – and seldom drive quickly enough to feel the benefit of 730bhp, in any case.
Next to that, the GTS’s 493bhp might seem a little modest. For all except autobahn regulars, though, it certainly shouldn’t feel like that. Porsche has liberated an extra 25bhp for this car over and above the likewise V8-engined Cayenne S and 40bhp more than the old Cayenne GTS had, and that amounts to abundant real-world accelerating and overtaking clout, especially through the lower half of the range of intermediate gears.
Porsche’s Zuffenhausen-built V8 is responsive and torquey at lower revs and spins freely at high crank speeds, and it sounds genuine, rich and unadulterated. It’s precisely the kind of engine that you would expect a Cayenne to have.
That extra bit of grunt isn’t all you’re getting with your GTS decals, either. This Cayenne has PASM adaptive air suspension and PTV Plus mechanical torque vectoring as standard, the former configured to cradle the car 10mm lower to the road than the S. It also runs front axle hubs borrowed from the Turbo GT, which bring with them an extra 0.5deg of negative wheel camber to sharpen up lateral grip levels and mid-corner steering response.
The steering and stability control systems are specially retuned and likewise the calibrations for the PDCC active anti-roll bars and four-wheel steering systems, if you option those in, all with fast road driving, rather than mixed on- and off-road use, in mind. The GTS also gets a separate radiator for the four-wheel drive system, rear differential and transfer case, to prevent them from overheating in more intensive use.
The GTS steering sy
