Jeremy Clarkson Porsche Cayenne S 2005 review: A lot of car for a very small amount of money

This Porsche Cayenne V8 will set you back just $5800. It’s a lot of car for a very small amount of money. What’s the catch?

A lot of car for little money: the 2005 Porsche Cayenne S

The invitation to a party that I received recently said the dress code was “La Dolce Vita”. And having absolutely no clue whether that meant “black tie” or “a jockstrap and army boots”, I asked the internet. Which said “La Dolce Vita” means “business casual”.

Immediately some sick came into my mouth because while I had no idea what “business casual” was, it did create an image in my mind, and the image was of a ­conventioneer in Florida. A polo shirt of some kind tucked into the waistband of a pair of chinos. And all topped off with some boating shoes. This sounded a) revolting and b) not very Dolce Vitaish at all.

I therefore went to the party in a pair of Levi’s jeans and a blue linen jacket. Which is what I also wear when the invite says “lounge suit”, “smart casual” or even “fancy dress”.

Perhaps the most dangerous dress code is “dress to thrill”, ­because many assume this has something to do with James Bond. It doesn’t. A point that became clear to one guest at a recent “dress to thrill” party when he walked through the door in a full frogman outfit and noticed that everyone else was in black tie. Actually, that’s not strictly true. Another guest who’d made the same ­mistake turned up in a Baron ­Samedi outfit, which meant he’d effectively blacked up at a party where many of the guests were young black men who’d never seen Live and Let Die.

I can’t stand dress codes ­because what does it matter what someone wears? I feel sure the style guru Nicky Haslam would call them common. But, more ­important, they’re irrelevant. And they’re especially irrelevant at a sporting event. Why do you have to wear a shiny hat to the races at Ascot? And why are you forced to put on a pair of Rupert Bear ­trousers on various golf courses? Wimbledon is ­especially hilarious. Because it’s run by the sort of ­people who love a dress-code ­restaurant, they are obviously ­unwilling to let the ­spectators turn up in what they want. So they’ve come up with a stipulation, which is: no ripped jeans.

What they mean of course is that they don’t want the sort of people who might wear ripped jeans, but they’re miles behind the times. Because the sort of people who wore ripped jeans when the Beastie Boys were running around helping themselves to VW badges now tend to wear tracksuit bottoms and training shoes. And saying “no tracksuits or training shoes” would be a bit of a problem at a sporting venue like Wimbledon.

What’s interesting to me, ­however, is that many of those who do prepare themselves ­properly for dress-code events spend hours shopping and bathing and shaving and doing up ties in a weird way and fastening ­complicated cufflinks, and using a velvet hairbrush to dust off their shiny lapels and wrestling with shoe trees and delicate socks and press studs and then, when they are looking GQ-cover-boy ­immaculate, they go to the party in a Tesla. This means that long before I’ve seen their dustless couture, which doesn’t mean ­anything to me anyway, I’ll have clocked them as an idiot.

Which brings me on to a rather strange car that arrived in my yard the other week. It was a 2005 Porsche Cayenne S that had been lightly modified to give it a rally raid look. The tyres were chunky, there was a roof box with a tent in it and at the front there were the sort of spotlights that teenage boys (me) used to fit to their Ford ­Cortinas because they couldn’t ­afford a pair of proper Cibies.

To round off this pound-shop transformation, someone had ­decided to write the word ­“Porsche” on pretty well all the flat surfaces. It was on the roof box, it was writ large down the flanks, it was even on the cheap mudflaps. Which is odd because underneath this particular Porsche was actually a Volkswagen.

Inside the 2005 Porsche Cayenne S

Because this was a £3,000 ($5800) car – yes, really – with about £40 worth of tacky-looking options nailed to it, I assumed someone had come round to mend my plumbing or drop off some hats for the farm shop. But no. It had been sent round by Porsche themselves, as a kind of mobile billboard for a service where you buy an old Cayenne and a Porsche dealer does it up. Before this ­particular car was placed in their museum – it’s an example of the first Porsche to have more than three doors – they wanted me to have a play with it.

This was a problem because where I live everyone has either a dark grey Range Rover or a dark grey Defender. Or if they’re really rich, either an Agusta A109 helicopter or a 15-year-old Polo with no gearlever because the dog ate it. Those are your choices. In this neck of the woods a car with ­Porsche written on every flat ­surface and a tent on the roof is the full Baron Samedi. It’s the frogman suit at the embassy dinner.

For two days I didn’t go out in it at all. I just didn’t have the chutzpah. But then I had to feed the pigs, and as they live in a wood I figured no one would see me, so off I went. The dogs liked it because you can drive along with the rear tailgate closed but the back window open, so they could make their ears flap about in the breeze while getting high on the exhaust fumes. And I liked it too, if I’m honest, because this was from a time when off-road cars were actually built to go off road. There was a no-nonsenseness to them, a simplicity. And lots of locking diffs, not that you need them up here on Cotswold brash, which is always bone dry three minutes after a downpour. No one gets heavy wellies up here, and no car ever gets stuck.

That night I was meeting up with some friends at a local pub. As parking’s always tricky there, I figured I’d end up a long way away and that no one would ever see it, so off I went. And halfway there the engine warning light came on, followed by a strange sense that one or two of the eight cylinders weren’t working. So I came home, used the equally old Range Rover instead, and the next time I looked the Cayenne had gone back to where it came from.

So what conclusions can be drawn from this weird week of ­yesteryear motoring? That if you’re going to modify a car, you need to spend more than £7? That the Cayenne is not as reliable as my Range Rover? Or that you shouldn’t put stuff in a museum just because it’s old? There needs to be more to it than that.

No. What I took away from the whole experience is the amazing revelation that you can buy a Porsche Cayenne for three grand. That seems to be a lot of car for a very small amount of money. And if it’s grey and a bit moth-eaten, it’s the same as a pair of jeans and a blue linen jacket. The sort of car that works everywhere.