More (unofficial) Cayenne Pictures

[Jack Olsen]

This thread was referenced on Rennlist, it includes these Cayenne spy shots:

(Click for a full-size version.)





Now, honestly, I can't imagine wanting one of these cars. It's not quite the tow vehicle I'd want, not quite the off-road vehicle I'd want, and not quite the performance car I'd want. It seems -- oddly enough -- to be a vehicle who's very concept can be summarized as the sum total of its many compromises. But the look of the thing (while not heart-stopping by any measure) doesn't irritate me as much as the Boxster or 996 designs do. I don't know why that is. SUVs are supposed to be practical, I guess.

And of course these are pre-production models, so I shouldn't be judging their appearance at all.

But the heartbreaking part is that this is the latest and greatest from a company that once produced these:






Ah, well.

[poorb0yw]

Whoa, I sure hope those arent the final proportions. The lines look really strange. They did look alot better in those personal videos taken by one of the rennlist members. Anyone know if they are making the twin-turbo 8 version or will there only be non turbos?

[Adam]

Wow.. they kinda look like a Hyundai Santa Fe! I guess that's good news for Hyundai...

[sweater914]

if that's going to be the production grille, there's going to be alot of unhappy turbo owners out there, could you just imagine the conversation, look mom that little car looks just like ours,

porsche needs to come out with the carrera GT and go back to the track

[fastbydrmike]

I am disappointed in the look of this suv. This dosn't even look like it was designed by porsche!! I will stick with my 911.

[cegerer]

"But the look of the thing (while not heart-stopping by any measure) doesn't irritate me as much as the Boxster or 996 designs do."

Jack, I'm sure the Porsche design department (or is that outsourced these days as well?) will take that as the compliment it was intended to be. -- Curt

[rstoll]

Just another market share, albeit a little late, as the SUV trend is getting a little age on it. Just think if Porsche were the next Enron what the market on our old horses would do!

[Desert Man]

I read in the Phoenix paper's business section that Porsche will have the dealer unveiling for the Cayenne this week in LA. Anyone on the Pelican Board that could get in to this event? At least then we would know how bad the final product will look. The biggest beef I have is that the size is really too small to be really useful as a SUV. I bought my wife a new-version Mountaineer and she loves the third seat that folds flat. It seems to me that if you want to haul any fairly large cargo pieces, or more than 5 people, the MB, Porsche, LR Discovery sized vehicles are too small. In fact we could have gotten the new Trailblazer or Jimmy for the GM employee price(she works for GMAC), but those vehicles didn't have a third seat! Sometimes, the product boys don't know the market as well as they claim.

[LR993TT]

FUGLY

[nostatic]

while I'm not defending their SUV, at least wait until they take all the fake fascia off the car. There is a big difference between a masked prototype and production lines...although it will still be an suv . There is a lot of fake crap on the exterior of both those cars (no comment on whether the soul is fake)

After all, the 911 was supposed to look like this:



I love that shape, but it doesn't exactly look like a '73RS...

[BlueSkyJaunte]

The Isuzu Axiom looks much, much cooler.

[Wayne 962]

For an SUV, it doesn't look bad at all. However, to me, it looks just like every other SUV out there. I always placed Porsche in the same category as other companies who decided to do things different. They didn't gain all the market share, but that wasn't necessarily their goal. They built a different product, and a superior product. One other company that comes to mind is Apple Computer (althought I believe that Apple has slipped recently on the technology front).

I think that Porsche should have stuck with it's roots. The build sports-cars that are designed to be just that, and to be the best in their field (most of the time). Needless to say, I would have hoped that the Cayenne would have been a truly unique product - one to compete with the Hummer, instead of the Pathfinder. Lamborghini came out with their $125K utility vehicle about 10 years ago, and it was a true off-road machine (more like the Range Rovers than the Hummers though).

This vehicle will probably sell well. Porsche doesn't have high sales figures for these cars for the first few years. I think that they are going to be competing head-on with the BMW X5. If that's who their competing against, then I think that it will probably be successul. There are an awful lot of $50K X5s being sold out there today. The same buyers will also go for a Porsche model. BMW sold 41,600 of these in the USA in 2000 (source www.autofieldguide.com) so it is probably safe to say that Porsche's 20,000 trucks sold goal worldwide is somewhat reasonable. The pricing for the basic model (non-Turbo) is supposed to be similar to the X5.

The true question is whether people will buy the VW version instead of the Porsche version. It could be another 914 debacle that might ruin the car for both companies. Keep in mind, though that the 914 was indeed one of the most successful Porsches ever sold on a volume basis (total of about 127,000 over six years - not too shabby).

I'm curious about this new SUV. I don't think it looks bad at all, but I don't think it looks any different from any of the other SUVs. I'm personally a big fan of trucks - I will always own one. Standard pickups are not useful for transporting more than 2 people, and I need to constantly transport parts and engines back and forth. However, I probably wouldn't ever buy or lease a brand new one, as who would want to put a leaky engine or transmission in the back of your new SUV?

Now, if I had lots of $$$ to spend, and the vehicle was for my wife and (non-existant yet) kids, I would probably go with the BMW X5 or the Lexus SUV. Although smaller than a Tahoe or Suburban, I think that they are the better looking ones of the bunch.

Then again, none of the trucks today even look like trucks. That's what I like about the Pelican-mobile:

http://www.pelicanparts.com/swapmeet_pics/914_reunion_99/disk6/MVC-160S.JPG

It looks like a truck should. It has 4 wheel drive. It has 2 doors. And it looks like it could run over just about anything.

-Wayne

[GregS]

On first glance, it's got all the appeal of the Pontiac Aztek...

[Wayne 962]

Don't these photos look somewhat 'staged?' The top one shows the trucks sitting at what appears to be some type of quickie mart. The bottom one shows the same trucks turned around, as if someone posed them for both photos? Did Porsche do this on purpose to stir up talk (like this).

-Wayne

[Wayne 962]

More Photos?

http://porsche.niello.com/spy_photos.htmlx

-Wayne

[cegerer]

Hmmmm .... those photos pretty much look like more of the same: generic mid-size SUV design. This one looks particularly bland:



And this one looks alot like everything else on the road:

[old_skul]

My opinion's slowly changing on the subject of the Cayenne.

Time flows by without our permission, regardless of how we love the present or the past. The future always tends to move in on our comfortable establishment of lifestyle.

I think the Cayenne, the 996, the Boxster, and the rest of the "new" Porsche products are an indication that things change, and it's up to us whether we like their products or not. Personally, I see a lot of "playa hatas" out there slagging everything they can about the post '97 Porsches simply because they're pissed that Porsche stopped making aircooled models.

(Despite the fact that the newer models outperform older production models in every way, shape and form - except aesthetically, maybe.)

I'll pass my own judgement on the Cay when it debuts. For the time being, everything out there in the photographs is either cladded up to the point where you can't even begin to tell what it looks like, or is a complete decoy, or is a fantasy picture mocked up by a car magazine. Until then, all these unofficial shots are just plain BS. I like looking at 'em, but damn - I'm not gonna pass judgement until I see what *Porsche* has to say about it.