Even though the idea of a Porsche-badged SUV was crazy talk just a couple of decades ago, the full-sized Cayenne hustled on to the scene in 2003 and dragged the iconic German brand into the world soon to be dominated by SUVs.
In fact, the Cayenne was an incredibly important car for the marque, and it’s generally agreed that without the Boxster and the Cayenne, there would be no Porsche at all in 2019. And regardless of what you personally think about a giant SUV with a Porsche badge, it remains that, as SUVs go, the Cayenne is about the sportiest of the lot (if you don’t count fringe-dwellers like the Lamborghini Urus).
So it shouldn’t have come as any surprise in 2014 when Porsche whipped the wraps off its latest SUV, the mid-sized Macan. Aimed at a market that was keen on even softer soft-roaders, the Macan took the Cayenne’s looks, shrunk them a little and added a few tasty engine options from the VW family catalogue to arrive at a sporty mid-sizer that still wore that all-important Porsche halo.
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There was no shortage of choice, either, with Porsche electing to offer a range of powerplants to suit all tastes.
That started with the entry-level 2.0-litre turbo petrol four-cylinder with 185kW of power. The Macan S was next with a turbocharged V6 and 250kW, while the GTS – the traditional sweet-spot across the various Porsche line-ups – used the same 3.0-litre V6 but squeezed an extra 15kW and 40Nm out of it (for 265 and 500).
The real performance hero was the Macan Turbo (all Macans were turbocharged, but that’s where badging has gone these days) with its 3.6-litre turbo V6 making 294kW for performance that was pretty eye opening, even considering the car’s 1900-plus kilogram kerb mass.
There was also a turbo diesel option for those more interested in fuel economy, although with 190kW from its 3.0-litre V6, performance was hardly lacking either.
The catch is that for either the Macan GTS or the entry-level four-cylinder version, you’ll need to shop for a newer car as those options didn’t arrive in showrooms until January 2016 and June 2016 respectively. And, partly as a response to VW’s Dieselgate scandal, Porsche dropped the turbo diesel Macan in 2018, making the range petrol-only.
All Macans, meantime, were fitted with Porsche’s effective and clever PDK dual-clutch transmission.
Of course, with any of these models, you’re paying plenty for the Porsche badge on the bonnet, but at least you get something for it in terms of dynamic ability. These vehicles, despite their weight, are pretty sporty things to drive and leave the average mid-sized SUV for dead on a twisty road.
Like a lot of SUVs, the Macan uses an on-demand four-wheel-drive system (which only drives all four wheels when tyre slip has been detected). But the difference here – and the reason for a large part of its athleticism – is that when only two wheels are driving, they’re the rear wheels. That gives the car a nice, old-school feel of having lots of traction and never forcing the front wheel to tackle too much in the way of steering AND driving at one time.
It kind of makes us wonder why more on-demand SUVs don’t use the same driveline strategy. Instead other brands tend to make the front wheels the default driving axle and it simply never feels as sporty as the Macan’s set-up.
The Porsche also offered an off-road mode which gave more evenly distributed drive between the axles as well as a hill-descent function. And while all Macans had adaptive dampers, the Turbo model also had air-suspension which could lift the body about 30mm for extra ground clearance. But what none of those modes could alter was the fact that without a set of low-ratio gears, the Macan was never a proper off-roader.
So that’s where we’d start checking first… underneath.
You’re looking for signs of bumps, scraps and bruises that suggests an optimistic previous owner has ignored this fact and tried to take a Macan into the bush. Frankly, we’d be surprised if any have been treated thus, but it’s still something you’d check for. What’s far more likely is an interior that has been knocked about by kids, dogs and push-bikes. Don’t be mistaken, the Macan features the usual Porsche quality materials, but nothing will survive the onslaught of a dedicated family of grubs.
The biggest hurdle for would-be Macan buyers is that early examples of the diesel version were fitted with the infamous VW defeat device that enabled the car to run cleanly during emissions tests and then revert to a more powerful, but dirtier, tune for the real world. Porsche is pursuing a programme of rectification or the Macan, and the best advice is to check with a dealer to see if a particular car has had the new software fitted. If it has, that’s great, but if not, it’s still no real big deal as the upgrade is free and is part of the VW group’s attempt to make good for such a dirty trick.
The petrol engines seem well made and capable of going the distance but, like any modern turbocharged, high-performance units, they do need their share of maintenance.
Skipped oil changes are a particularly bad idea as old, dirty oil can soon form sludge in the engine and kill it in short order. A check of the dipstick (and the service handbook) should tell you a lot about any car you’re considering.
Porsche is one of the very few companies that seems to have mastered the double-clutch transmission, too. Despite being part of the VW family, the Porsche PDK unit doesn’t seem anywhere near as prone to faults and failures as some of the earlier VW DSG transmissions which use similar technology. Maybe that legendary Porsche reliability is not a myth after all.
As far as recalls go, the Macan has only one (Dieselgate aside) against its name; petrol-engined examples were recalled to check the condition of a fuel line inside the engine bay which could rupture and, in the worst-case, cause a fire.
