Porsche Cayenne Turbo S - First Drive

Porsche Cayenne Turbo S
Price: £81,565
On sale: February 25
0-60mph: 5.3 seconds; top speed 167mph
Average fuel: 18mpg
Standard equipment: Leather everything, four-wheel drive, 20-inch alloys, power front seats, seat heating all round, special Turbo S four tailpipes, six-speed auto Tiptronic transmission with steering shift changers, parking radar, Bose surround-sound stereo, bi-xenon curve-adaptive headlamps.

Tiscali verdict: 8/10 The ultimate toffroader

You don't have to go to Dubai to get a rough idea of the place. Just wait for the hottest day of the summer and drive around your nearest retail estate, wearing a big polar neck, windows wound up and heating on max. Oh, and imagine every other car is a Porsche.

The black stuff makes this corner of the United Arab Emirates a highly lucrative playground for purveyors of precision-engineered German automobilia. What was a dirt-poor Bedouin fishing village a few decades ago is now a high-rise Mecca for the monied; the perfect backdrop for Porsche to launch its bid for the fastest sport utility vehicle (or SUV) yet: the 521bhp Cayenne Turbo S.

There are two ways to critique this car: either through the bewildered eyes of a liberal-minded environmentalist or the cor-blimey out-on-stalks orbs of a Clarkson fan. Let's try both. For a start, the 'cors' are plentiful. Porsche's standard Cayenne, launched three years ago, was predicted by many to spell brand suicide: a 911 morphed into a family estate on stilts. Porsche has sold 120,000 so far though, offering little consequent evidence of self harm. The cheapest, V6, model costs £35,390, so there is scant chance of the badge becoming commonplace. Until now, the most opulent version was the Turbo (£70,700), a V8 with two turbo units, two intercoolers and 4.5 litres of engine capacity.

This Turbo S model has all that, but those wicked engineers have tweaked the geometry, volume and efficiency of the intercoolers. The results on paper are significant: bhp up from 450 to 521, the 62mph sprint down from 5.6 seconds to 5.2 and the top speed rising from 165mph to 167. School running, you might think, has just entered hyperspace. And so has the price to... £81,565.

Porsche's engineers have found some crumbs of comfort for the anti-SUV lobby: while the standard Cayenne Turbo averages 18mpg overall, this one, despite the whopping power hike, does no worse. I did say crumbs...

So speaking of the wonton destruction of the planet in the name of getting your children to school on time, how about the possibility of an economical Porsche Cayenne diesel? After all, the Cayenne shared its gestation plans with Volkwagen's Touareg, the 2.5-litre turbodiesel version of which passes the school gates on an average of 36mpg. The answer is a resounding no: Porsche makes it clear that with two thirds of the world market for 8-cylinder luxury SUVs - and by its own estimate only 10% or potential sales being diesels - there's little point in them risking the badge's performance integrity by offering a derv option. So how about a hybrid? The technical experts say they're concerned about battery technology being an impediment to progress, but promise something newsworthy "in two years' time."

. The price of this model doesn't include smelling salts, but a free seat on Porsche's Driving Experience programme comes as standard. And if that session of hands-on expert tuition impresses you, you can also - if you have the odd £2,700 handy for the four-night experience - jet down to Dubai and drive a Cayenne, like I did, here in the Arabian desert.

Dubai's roads are a bit like sensory deprivation. There are no obvious marker points to indicate scale, so 100mph can feel like 50. And 100mph is no mean feat in this metal missile. Despite being the size of a small truck, it shifts like a supercharged magic carpet, the active suspension management system (an air-sprung design) taking care of any sudden demands from the driver and preventing body roll. The car has six different ride-height settings and, helpfully, when you manually adjust for rougher terrain, it tells you when you have reached the required setting.

As demonstrated by me when, within ten metres of leaving the tarmac the car's nose sunk into the terra-not-so-firma, driving on sand is a specific skill. You must never stop on flat terrain but point your nose downhill. And where lower revs and low traction work in mud, on sand it's a case of boot the throttle, grip the wheel and go like stink. Raw power is often the way to a dune's summit. And with this much - once you've acquired the know-how - the super-fast Cayenne Turbo S leaves to dune unturned.

Of course, very few Cayenne buyers will ever stray beyond the odd clumsily negotiated verge, let alone into the foothills of the Oman mountains, but like the top speed of a 911 Turbo, Porsche customers like to know it's there, even if they never use it. And given that I'm writing this while still spitting the grains out of my mouth, I think they can rest assured that it is.

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