SUVs and crossers are only Porsches in name/badge. If it isn't a sedan contraption it's really a VW. Good styling, but not true to the essence.
I am in admirer, but my entire collection of multiple automobiles is worth less than 25 grand. Yet they're actually pretty nice and cool, one is comfortable.
As a longtime Porsche fan that was exactly my first thought also when Porsche started making SUVs, but I couldn't have been more wrong. They're not just very much in the spirit of Porsches history- I find the SUVs to be more impressive and interesting than any of their sports cars.
The Porsche SUVs are really unique and impressive performance vehicles in their own right, each in different ways- especially the Cayenne. The Cayenne is indeed very similar to a VW Touareg, but the Touareg itself is nothing like other VWs and started out as a crazy expensive Piech era offroad supercar with V12 and V10 engines that is also the basis for the modern Bentley and Lamborghini SUV supercars. Look at YouTube videos you will see these same vehicles posting sports car worthy lap times on a track, as well as easily doing some of the most technical offroad trails. To me it's a mind blowing feat of engineering to make a single vehicle that can handle such opposed things, and do them both extremely well.
You can also find a lot of nice older Porsches for much less than 25 grand- 10 grand will get you a nearly perfect condition low mileage first gen Boxster or Cayenne these days.
So I can buy a VW that is identical to a Porsche with the same handling, build quality, interior quality, performance, charging etc for a fraction of the price.
Please tell us which model it is as this could shake up the industry.
Touareg- which VW pulled from the US market because it also cost as much, or sometimes even more than the very similar Cayenne, and people wouldn't pay Porsche money for a VW badge. In 2004 you could buy a new VW twin turbo V10 Touareg for 60-70k, or about 100-120k adjusted for inflation. VW went through a weird time when ran by Ferdinand Piëch, the grandson of Ferdinand Porsche who was involved with a lot of really high end and unusual performance cars that were cool but didn't really end up having a market.
The Macan does share a similar design to the Audi Q5, but is also heavily modified for performance over the Q5, and it isn't similar to any of VWs models. That also seems like hardly an insult as the Q5 is also a high end SUV with great performance and handling.
The history is important because Porsche and VW have been collaborating on cars since they were founded by the same person- and the “that’s not a real Porsche, just a VW” snobbery has been applied to almost every Porsche model since, even the now iconic 912. VW also occasionally makes cars that are at least as high end as anything Porsche makes.
Both of the Porsche SUVs I mentioned are sold with all 3 drivetrains BTW: electric, plug in hybrid, and pure EV.
And is overall better at charging (270kw max).
Also BMW has seen strong EV growth: https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/global/article/detail/T044372...