Cayenne Turbo GT: First Look At Porsche’s Super-SUV Moneymaker

Porsche’s 2024 Cayenne lineup receives a major refresh done the Porsche way, with noodling, significant upgrades, and even clean-canvas redesign of most major systems, from powertrain, suspension, and bodywork to a wholesale reinvention of the interior’s digital features. Few other car companies would change so many elements in a refresh.

The most desirable of all Cayenne is the one seen in photos here, Porsche’s Super-SUV, the 650-horsepower Turbo GT that can hit 60 mph in just 3.1 seconds and has a top speed of 189 mph.

Yet that astonishing performance aside, the most significant change in Turbo GT and all Cayenne models is upsized flatscreens powered with a full-color chip that crisply renders primary and secondary gauges. Controls on the steering wheel, dash, and center console have all been rethought to enhance the man-machine interface.

Directly ahead of the driver in what we used to call the instrument binnacle is a 12.6-inch freestanding flatscreen with displays that change to match the differing calibration settings, from Normal to Sport and Sport+. Porsche is fully exploiting capabilities of the NVIDIA chip. For 2024 there’s an optional heads-up display, which in daily driving will prove worth every penny.

Many of the secondary and tertiary driver controls have analog redundancies, with switches and toggles for those of us who don’t like sifting menus on a touchscreen. Adopting lessons from the Taycan Turbo S electric hyper-sedan, Cayenne’s new highly compact gearshift lever is now placed on the dash panel to the right of the steering column, a relocation that opens considerable acreage in the center console for HVAC controls, and analog toggles for seat warmers and rear defroster.

Front-seat passengers often serve as co-pilot, and Porsche now offers an optional 10.9-inch display on the right-side of the dash that can control entertainment and comms functions, and deliver real-time performance data. Apparently, Porsche will also allow this panel to stream video content, which heretofore has been considered verboten, a potential distraction to the driver.

Turbo GT is only available with the elegant fastback coupé roofline. Cayenne’s underlying and most fundamental architecture is shared across several luxury brands, and the “engineering toolkit” offers two wheelbases. Turbo GT rides on the shorter 114-inch wheelbase, emphasizing its sporting nature.

As standard fitment, Turbo GT has a 2-chamber, 2-valve air suspension, which is available optionally on the lesser models. The twin chambers—one inside the other—are bladders, or balloons. One provides a softer, plusher, and more compliant ride for daily life in the city or for long highway drives. The other chamber delivers a firmer ride with much less body roll in aggressive cornering. Having two chambers instead of one allows a higher degree of differentiation between the Normal setting and the Sport and Sport+ settings. Next to upgrades in the digital man-machine interface, this change to suspension is the greatest advancement in all the 2024 Cayenne.

Turbo GT has most everything one wants in any Porsche, no matter if it’s a sports car, sedan, or SUV. Porsche Dynamic Chassis Control, ceramic composite brakes like you’d find on Porsche’s highest-performing sports cars, rear-axle steering to help navigate tight parking garages but also sharpen cornering at higher speeds, and nothing less than a titanium exhaust system, which will have the much-loved ting-ting sound when cooling off after a quick mountain run. As seen in photos here, Turbo GT will ride on 22-inch wheels and ultra-high-performance tires, too. The 4-liter twin-turbo V8 produces 650 horsepower, a boost of 19 horsepower compared to last year, a classic calibration tweak in the age of black boxes and high-pressure turbos. I look forward to driving one.