Recently I had the opportunity to test the full line of Porsche vehicles at the Porsche World Roadshow. This is a performance demonstration Porsche organizes for potential buyers and media every two years.
The first demonstration was the off road capabilities of Porsche’s SUV, Cayenne. Now, I have driven this vehicle before but never off road and off road we took it. With the push of a few buttons Cayenne’s suspension was raised and the correct off road gear was engaged and I was off into the woods. The extensive course was something that would challenge any good four-wheel drive vehicle. With ease the Cayenne climbed small paths, traversed tricky 30-degree side lifts as well as 45-degree inclines with ease. The amazing thing about all this is that our test vehicles were only equipped with summer street tires.
Next exercise was taking another set of Cayenne’s and Panamera Sedan’s out on the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (better known as Mossport) track. The instructors informed us that Cayenne was quite capable of handling the track at high speeds, which I thought was rather optimistic and an accident waiting to happen. Again to my astonishment, the varying models of Cayenne, which included V8, engined models, turbo V8s and even a Hybrid (V6 and electric) all zipped around the track with no hint of ever tipping over.
I had never driven Porsche’s Panamera before and as I suspected, the sedan was a natural on the track at speeds that were just a little less than the 911 models we drove later in the day. This group also comprised of V6s, V8s and of course Turbo V8s. Performance of the V6s was a little lacking in the straightaway’s but they soon caught up with just a little time. You have to remember that you probably wouldn’t even notice this lack of power on the street with a V6, its just that we had the freedom of being able to really push these cars to the limits.
Just to emphasize the acceleration and great braking power of Porsches’ in general, we were allowed to do some pretty extreme acceleration and brake tests as if we were in a highway or a panic stop situation. Well, the test car was nothing short of astonishing, accelerating hard and stopping in astonishingly short distances.
To understand the handling of the Boxster (convertible) we all competed in an obstacle course made up of cones set up in a complex array in a large parking lot. Having competed in these events before, I knew how difficult this can be in a small car. The Boxster slipped through the course with ease, which would put some small and very capable fast front-wheel-drive cars to shame.
The last event of the day was the track event with the 911 and 911 Turbo and the nice handling Cayman. Handling on all these cars as you might anticipate was faultless and nothing like Porsches’ old that could scare the best of drivers.
I have driven a lot of Porsches in the past but the new 911 is nothing short of terrific, which it had to be as engineers really wanted to go all out to mark Posrche’s 50th anniversary. But of all the Porsche cars I test drove, my favorite as it was with many of the other jour-nalists was the Cayman S, a real great handling car for the money.
If your passion is driving a fine handling car, then there are not many cars that could compete with a Porsche. Besides everything else it does, it is well built and proved to be a very durable vehicle, considering the hell we put the cars through.
