Porsche's street-fighting Cayenne
CNET Car Tech reviews the 2009 Porsche Cayenne GTS.
Wayne Cunningham Managing Editor / Roadshow
Wayne Cunningham reviews cars and writes about automotive technology for CNET's Roadshow. Prior to the automotive beat, he covered spyware, Web building technologies, and computer hardware. He began covering technology and the Web in 1994 as an editor of The Net magazine.
It's a rare SUV that comes with a manual transmission. It's an even rarer SUV that can justify it. The Porsche Cayenne GTS's handling makes a manual transmission a preferred option. Unfortunately, just not the particular manual used in the GTS. This car's handling finesse makes you want to give it a quick downshift before a corner, to get the most out of its 405 horsepower engine on the way out, but shifter's long throw adds to that gear change time significantly.
That criticism aside, this new Cayenne sports some new cabin tech, a suite with navigation, stereo, and phone system all much better than what we've seen before from Porsche. Welcome to the 21st century.