“Cayenne Coupé – an athletic sports car” – Porsche
The Collins English dictionary defines a coupé as “a car with a fixed roof, a sloping back, two doors and seats for four people.” The Cayenne coupé has the fixed roof and seats down to a tee. The sloping back is debatable. While it is more sloping than the regular Cayenne, there is still a definite hatchback/SUV shape to my eyes. However, possibly the most obvious criteria for a sports car is the number of doors. Two. The Cayenne Coupé clearly has four doors. Doesn’t it?
I have also researched what the Collins dictionary has to say about sports cars. “A low, fast car, usually with room for only two people.” Again, the Cayenne will surely be fast in Turbo trim, and the ‘usually’ gets it out of the two people part. After that, the word low remains and there is no way around this one. The Cayenne is not low by any means and I think tall would be appropriate.
The phrase coupé sports car is not exactly a great fit then, but should we be surprised with Porsche? No. Absolutely not. In fact, my thoughts when I saw this were ‘of course’. It makes perfect sense. The craze of turning saloons into ‘grand coupes’ is something we have all become accustomed to. It is really simple for manufacturers too. Take a saloon, make it lower, the roof line more curved and there you have it. A new model with minimum effort. Another upside is that they can put a higher price tag on it too since it is now a desirable ‘coupé’.
The same has been happening to SUVs too. BMW turned their X5 into a sloping X6, and the X3 into an X4. Even though the latter cars are almost identical to the former just with less headroom, people buy them at a premium because they make more of a statement. In fact, Porsche is somewhat late to the party with the Cayenne Coupé, as others are well established in the market of SUV Coupés.
I don’t think the actual car looks awful, although the regular Cayenne’s proportions are much better. What I don’t like very much is how the rear retains the vertical bottom have that the Cayenne has and it is only over the light clusters that any changes have been made. It looks like the bulky and square bottom half is still made to fit and support the heavy Cayenne structure above but instead merges with the new curved roof.
Porsche need not fear about finding customers for the Cayenne Coupé. In an ideal world, they would. People would realise that this is now very similar to the existing Macan. The Macan has the added benefit of being designed to be smaller, less angular and more sloping or ‘Coupé’ like in nature. Not to mention the price difference too. Sure the Cayenne will be a little bigger, but headroom should be similar in the two.
This is not an ideal world though. The majority of current Cayenne owners do not need a Cayenne. Most would be covered with a small saloon for their needs and if they have lots of stuff to carry around, an estate car could fit the bill. The reason people buy into a Cayenne is almost always for the image. The big, expensive, commanding Porsche badge and a high driving position. These people have no need for off-road capabilities and neither do they notice the sporty nature of their SUV. These people will love the Cayenne Coupé.
It begs the question then, should manufacturers respect the established naming culture of cars and call this the SUV that it is, or should the naming culture change to accommodate new additions to the market such as this. The world doesn’t need a sporty SUV Coupé, nor does it need a four door saloon turned into a sloping coupé shape, but these exist, people like them and they sell. They sell really well. It is time we accept it? Nah.
AronBell & Cars 