Let's say you want a VW Golf GTI or a Jaguar XFR or even a Porsche Cayenne Turbo, but you'd
like to turn their performance all the way up to eleven.
Well that's why you can get a Golf GTI Performance Pack, A Jaguar XFR S and even a Porsche Cayenne
Turbo S. However, are these highly tuned models really worth the extra cash?
To find out I'm going to be comparing them on track to their standard versions.
In this video we have the Porsche Cayenne Turbo against the Cayenne Turbo S.
The normal Porsche Cayenne Turbo has a 4.8-litre V8, with 493bhp and 700Nm of torque.
It can hit 62mph in just 4.7 seconds and goes on to an electronically limited top speed
of 155mph.
It costs £89,324.
The Cayenne Turbo S cost £20,460 more but for that you get an extra 49bhp and 50 Nm
of torque.
The 0-62 time forwards by 3 tenths of a second and the top speed increases to 175mph.
More importantly the S gets extra goodies in the shape of active torque vectoring, clever
active anti roll control system.
But does all this make the standard Cayenne Turbo feel somewhat lacking when you take
it onto the alien environment of a race track?
We've got the car with the gearbox in the sport setting, using the paddles third gear
into this first corner, first thing you notice is that for a big heavy car that weighs over
two tonnes it's remarkably little roll and you can feel the car just wriggling and working
at keeping itself planted to the road.
This car hasn't got the active anti roll bar system, hasn't got the torque vectoring system
and hasn't got ceramic brakes.
So it's a pretty standard Turbo in terms of its dynamic set up.
Even then, it's pretty accomplished for a big car.
It doesn't feel massively quick on the track but them tracks do sap away performance if
that makes sense - it probably feels quite fast on a road.
Brakes are quite strong, body control is really good for a big SUV.
It's nice natural feeling for a car of this size, and really it's quite a simple car to
drive on the track you just really have to brake in a straight line get it turned in
and then just manage the weight and get on the throttle.
It's not a hard car to drive quickly, there isn't really much you can do to drag more
performance out of it.
Now we come to the last corner.
It's quite an easy straightforward car to drive.
The Cayenne Turbo finished with a flying lap of 1 minute 14.1 seconds.
But can the Cayenne Turbo S go any quicker?
So if you want the ultimate in Porsche SUV you need this car the Turbo S. It's got extra
power and you can feel that straight away but it's not just the extra power, this car
comes as standard with Porsches PTV torque vectoring system.
And it also active anti roll bar system which tightens body roll even more.
You can feel that straight away in the first couple of corners because you've got quite
a lot of change of direction there and you can feel the active anti roll bars are tying
the body control down just that little bit better than the standard car.
In terms of the power, you can feel it but it's not a massive difference but it does
feel a bit quicker.
Traction's good as well - that torque vectoring is just, for a big car, it's quite amazing
how it defeats physics on the circuit.
There's no finesse to it, but it's just a case of it just turns in and grips and goes
so much better than you would imagine a car of this height and weight and size would do.
Through here, it does feel better than the standard car.
All that vectoring of the torque and just roll bars as well.
Just feels a bit sharp.
Not a lot in it in the brakes although this car has got the ceramic brakes.
Coming around the last two corners, it's a big car but it's really quick and quite well
sorted.
In the end, the Cayenne Turbo S was four tenths of a second faster around the test track.
So is it worth the extra money?
Well you can definitely feel the active roll control system working, but you can fit this
as an option to the standard Turbo.
And for most people, the standard Turbo is more than fast enough for a large SUV.