PORSCHE CAYENNE GTS

GTS is enhanced to suit its new status as Europe's hottest non-hybrid Cayenne

- MATT SAUNDERS

If Porsche's upper-mid-range, gently warmed GTS derivatives have a fault, perhaps it's that they can sometimes feel less like performance models in their own right and more like rebranded combinations of just the right optional extras. Glorified trim levels, you might say.

Circumstance has seen to it that you can't say this about the new Cayenne GTS, however. With the range-topping Turbo GT not being on sale in Europe any longer, this becomes the fastest non-hybrid Cayenne in the line-up. That fact could give it fresh interest from private buyers of more traditional tastes who don't see the sense in carting around nearly 400kg of extra ballast in a Turbo E-Hybrid that they will seldom charge up - and seldom drive quickly enough to feel the benefit of 730bhp, in any case.

Next to that, the GTS's 493bhp might seem a little modest. For all except autobahn regulars, though, it certainly shouldn't feel like that. Porsche has liberated an extra 25bhp for this car over and above the likewise V8-engined Cayenne S and 40bhp more than the old Cayenne GTS had, and that amounts to abundant real-world accelerating and overtaking clout, especially through the lower half of the range of intermediate gears.