STAYING POWER

PORSCHE’S CAYENNE JUST CELEBRATED ITS TWENTIETH BIRTHDAY. TOO YOUNG FOR A MIDLIFE CRISIS? DON’T ASK CALVIN FISHER.

TWENTY YEARS AGO, Porsche did the unthinkable. From the fading embers of its sportscar empire, it conceived a thing that nobody knew they wanted. An SUV with a badge previously reserved almost exclusively for the iconic 911.

Enter the Cayenne, pig-faced in its original 2002 iteration, and shared between the VAG group as the VW Touareg and Audi Q7. This union would be ground zero for what would become an assault on the off-roading segment by premium brands, much like BMW had just achieved with the X5. But the peppery Cayenne was immediately in a class of its own because this was a marque beloved, feared and respected for producing one of the finest sports cars of all time.

Today, the Stuttgart carmaker can add purveyor of fine performance SUVs to their boilerplates because with the Cayenne, it climbed out of the red and solidly into the black. It almost singlehandedly saved the brand financially and a quick glance in traffic today is all it takes to see that the gamble on SUVs has paid off. They're everywhere.

FUTURE CLASSIC