Trust us here; the much humbugged diesel era has arrived in Stuttgart and this 2010 Porsche Cayenne Diesel 3.0 TDI rips it up in worthy style. This is far more than some nasty farm implement dressed up with a Porsche crest.
Porsche is serious about this diesel deal, so don't start with the bellyaching. The Cayenne diesel works like a Porsche should, featuring the same basic engine in the same basic vehicle architecture as used in the Audi Q7 and Volkswagen Touareg. Remember, if Porsche had restricted itself to the 911 sports car, the company never would have built up the cash reserves to absorb the whole VW Group these days. And without the Cayenne, the upcoming Panamera program would have been running on fumes and Porsche itself would be little more than a fancy engineering division at the VW Group.
Besides, if you drive the 2010 Porsche Cayenne Diesel 3.0 TDI as if you were pedaling a Toyota Prius on a hypermiling dare, its 26.4-gallon fuel tank could get you from El Paso to San Diego on one fill-up, hombre. That in itself is pretty cool in a Porsche way, except that there aren't any immediate plans to bring this SUV to North America at the moment.
Porsche Has Diesel Blood
The Porsche name actually first adorned a diesel long ago, when the production of a long succession of farm tractors (often called "Schlepper" in German) started in 1934. The final Porsche tractor model was called the Master AP144 and it accelerated to a top speed of 22 mph thanks to a 50-horsepower, air-cooled 3.3-liter four-cylinder engine. It had a redline of just 2,000 rpm. Now you know.
The 2010 Porsche Cayenne Diesel 3.0 TDI is the first Porsche diesel since production of the tractors ended completely in 1964. It's a reminder that Porsche isn't necessarily about horsepower but instead engineering solutions for the right applications and usually at the right time.
So if you get there while being pulled along by a team of horses or just a few really big ones, it should be all the same.
A Tractor This Ain't
Unlike a tractor, this Cayenne diesel seats five people in quiet comfort. The turbocharged 3.0-liter V6 engine comes to Porsche from the VW-Audi Group, incorporating a cast-iron crankcase, aluminum cylinder heads, a balance shaft to control vibration from the tall compression ratio, a variable-geometry turbocharger and twin intercoolers.
Lord knows what sort of CO2 emissions rating the old Porsche tractors inflicted on Mother Earth, but the V6 TDI engine has the very latest piezo units for the common-rail direct injection, clever exhaust gas recirculation and a standard diesel particulate filter, so it emits 21 percent less CO2 than the Cayenne's 3.6-liter gasoline V6 and improves mpg by 39 percent. The Cayenne diesel jumps to 100 km/h (62 mph) from a standstill in just 8.3 seconds, only 0.2 second slower than the gas V6, and this is mainly due to the diesel's added 154 pounds at the curb (4,939 pounds in total).
