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I’m in the passenger seat of a new 2019 Porsche Cayenne at a simply impossible angle as my German driver, Jochen, explains that with all the dynamic systems that Porsche built into the third-generation of this big SUV, he could effectively drive it backward.
As the wet section of the driver training course comes towards the window to my right, I have to ask myself, how did I get here? Fortunately, the complicated question of how this Cayenne is capable of making this maneuver is one that Porsche was only too happy to help me answer at a technical seminar it held in Germany. Put simply, the answer is the use of the best available resources and psychotic attention to detail to make it all come together.
A quick trip around the table of elements is the first step to creating an SUV that Porsche will put its badge on. A totally new car means that a totally new combination of hardened and regular steel, as well as cast and extruded aluminum, to create a unibody that’s not only considerably stiffer and stronger but one that’s also nearly 50 lbs lighter. Porsche engineers are so obsessed with lightness that they’re working at the limits of what they believe is possible with aluminum. Every single body panel, as well as large swaths of the unibody, are made of the material, which, apart from not being cheap, leads to far-ranging complications.
Aluminum is a useful material thanks to how much lighter it is than steel, but it’s also a difficult material to shape. Porsche’s designers were intent on giving the new Cayenne wide wheel arches and recognizably Stuttgartian hips, but unlike steel, aluminum body panels could only be curved so far. The rear end of the Cayenne, in fact, is right on the limit of breaking, thanks to the shape of the rear quarter. Beneath the skin, too, it leads to problems. A combination of hardened and regular steel still have better crash qualities (something that the whole world must deal with thanks to North America’s stiff testing regulations) so the two materials must live in harmony. But a quick look at a chemistry textbook will show you that steel and aluminum make poor bedfellows, creating what’s popularly known as a battery — and more to the point, a lot of rust. To keep them separated (and also help them bond better) Porsche simply uses glue. Hey, simple solutions can be elegant.
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To keep all of that stable over the road, Porsche turned to the Volkswagen empire for resources. Porsche has borrowed heavily from Audi’s MLB platform that underpins the Q7, among others. The front multi-link suspension unit has been lifted, as have the eight-speed tiptronic transmission and the co-developed 2.9-liter twin turbo V6 that can currently be driven in the Porsche Panamera and the Audi RS5. If cylinder count matter to you, you can also get a twin-turbo V8. Porsche is also quick to point out that the MLB platform has been heavily tuned for duty in the Cayenne. And in you’re worried about not having enough Porsche bits in your Cayenne, the rear wheels now steer.
Just like the 911, the Cayenne now has rear-wheel steering that helps low-speed maneuvers by tightening its turning circle, helps high-speed stability by steering with the front wheels, and helps high-speed cornering by improving turn-in. That’s not all that Porsche has added, though.
With the addition of the optional new three-chamber air suspension, the Cayenne can go from stiff and stable racer to soft and comfortable bahn stormer to capable off roader at the touch of a button. And with active anti-roll bars, the new Cayenne is much more level and stable through high-speed corners. To help with off-roading, meanwhile, it has optional diff locks front and rear. These needn’t only be applied in the rough stuff, though. The rear diff can be locked during “high performance” on road (read: track) driving to help encourage the rear end to step out a bit.
The back end hardly needs any help, as Jochen was only too happy to point out, because the new Cayenne’s AWD system funnels 100 percent of its power (350, 450 or 550 hp depending on the engine you select) to the back wheels, only rerouting some of it to the front axle when it’s considered important. That’s nothing new, however, as the previous Cayenne’s AWD system was much the same, but what is new is how much power the back end can handle now that Porsche has decided to stagger the tires. With big, thick rear wheels, it argues that more of the driving can be done from there, leaving the front wheels to focus on steering. So, the front wheels drive when the rear wheels need help and the rear wheels steer when the front needs help.
It’s all evidence of a holistic approach to car design in which every part of the car works in harmony to improve performance. It all sounds wildly complicated, but thanks to incredible attention to detail, it all comes together. To give you a little insight into that unusual-even-for-Germans attention to detail: the event I attended had the whole chassis of the Cayenne in the lobby as well as wall-sized Porsche banners in each of the meeting rooms, even though this wasn’t one of its facilities. What really caught my attention, though, was that they had even replaced the ads above the urinals with pictures of the Cayenne and its newly engineered internals.
You may say that none of that has anything to do with the actual manufacturing of automobiles, but that would be a little like saying that the rear wheels don’t have anything to do with steering. It’s all connected, and the urinal ads are a testament to Porsche’s holistic attention to detail, something that’s reflected in the Cayenne’s ease with speed.
A great big brain connects all the systems and keeps them constantly in conversation, ensuring that the back wheels always know what the front wheels are doing, and the left side of the suspension always knows what the right side is doing, and all of it knows what the engine and the brakes (which thanks to a proprietary coating are much improved) and the roll bars and the air suspension are doing so as to best respond to any situation. It all sounds complicated, and it is, but the result is a car that can, in the immortal words of Jochen, “drive backwards.”
You’ll be able to find out what it’s like to drive a Porsche Cayenne backwards in the summer of 2018, when it becomes available in North America.
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