That's a perfect example. The Cayenne turbo block was Nikasil to prevent that very issue.

Porsche was pretty stingy when it came to the Cayenne oil consumption issue. A friend (working at a Porsche dealer at the time) had the same problem, Porsche rejected his request for assistance and he ended up sourcing a low mileage replacement.

With the old engine, it was burning so much oil it would foul one of the spark plugs in a few hundred miles.

Even with a new V8 engine, it used a liter of oil per 1000 miles, which was "within specs" as far as Porsche was concerned. And, yes, after a few years it became evident that they had a lot of failures due to Alusil cylinders. There is/was a company that would rebuild those engines by boring and installing cast iron liners for a fraction of what a new or rebuilt engine from Porsche would cost. That would have been my fall-back plan.

FYI, my Ford GT has an aluminum block, but it uses cast iron cylinder liners too. Often, the old tech is still the best.

I heard a lot of horror stories about the V8 Cayennes having issues with the Alusil engine blocks, makes me wonder how come the '78-'95 928s blocks almost never had any issues with their Alusil blocks, my 928S4 engine has more than 150K miles on it and still the cylinders looks like new.

Back to the original post : Why not get a good used 3.3 pistons and cylinders, nice and clean ones are everywhere and can ge bought for less than $1K. Thats what I did when I converted my 3.2 to 3.3 low compression.