German Car Zone

You have to pity those clever boffins working on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, near Geneva. Just over 350km away, in Stuttgart, Porsche’s engineering team has already found the solution to one of the fundamental questions in physics, and it’s called the Cayenne GTS.

This is not an SUV. Yes, yes, it’s big and tall, with four-wheel drive, a modicum of ground clearance and has the ability to do as much off-road work as most would need. However, announced at the end of 2007, the GTS is the sportiest car in the range of facelifted Cayennes and more RS4 than K2. It slots neatly into a space above the regular V8-engined ‘S’ and below the range-topping, 171mph Turbo.

The sporty Cayenne’s direct-injection engine remains at 4806cc, but clever improvements to the intake system give a further 20bhp (405bhp at 6500rpm), while the old tuner’s trick of lowering the final drive allows much brisker acceleration (0-62mph is now 6.1sec) with the same non-Turbo maximum of 157mph.

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