Testing for the new, facelifted Porsche Cayenne has reached its final stages, with the German car maker subjecting its updated luxury flagship to a series of endurance tests and technology trials across four continents.
Pre-production and prototype versions of the new Cayenne, which will receive what has been described as “one of the most extensive product upgrades in the history of Porsche” by the firm, were put through their paces in Asia, Africa, Europe and North America, covering more than four million test kilometres.
The SUV took on extreme conditions in desert, snowy and rugged mountain terrains, with Porsche engineers testing the model’s new semi-active chassis. Tests also included over 200,000km spent in urban traffic, on motorways and on country roads.
Porsche said it was testing the Cayenne as if it had been “developed from scratch”, with the goal of “achieving an even wider range between the typical Porsche on-road performance, long-distance comfort and off-road capability.”
Towards the end of last year, Autocar exclusively drove a pre-production prototype of the new Cayenne. Read on to see what we thought…
Driving the 2023 Porsche Cayenne prototype
It’s early morning as a fleet of camouflaged new Porsche Cayennes leaves a Los Angeles hotel’s underground car park.
They join the traffic and run in convoy along the back roads of Venice Beach and Santa Monica, before reaching the Pacific Coast Highway and heading farther north beyond Malibu in search of challenging canyon roads.
These early-build prototypes, both in conventional SUV and coupe bodystyles, have been at the centre of a demanding test programme along the California coast and in Nevada’s Mojave Desert for almost a month.
Now, before they’re all flown back to Germany, where they will be torn down to study the wear and tear on various components or pushed into further testing duties, it’s our turn to discover how Porsche has tried to raise the Cayenne’s appeal against ever-growing competition from the likes of the BMW X5, Mercedes-Benz GLE and Range Rover Sport.
This ‘facelift’ is clearly more than just a token update. In fact, the changes are quite extensive, due to the decision to continue production well beyond what was planned at launch in 2017.
Model line director Stefan Fegg explains: “The Cayenne’s future is secure. With the investments we’re making in adding EVs to the line-up, we’ve decided to extend the life of many of our ICE cars. We’ve been given greater freedom than is usually the case at this point in the model cycle.”
Porsche won’t go into detail on what’s in store for the Cayenne after 2025, when the Mk4 was meant to arrive. What we can tell you, though, is that the facelifted Mk3 we’re driving here in prototype form certainly carries some rather significant changes.