Porsche Cayenne S: Jeremy Clarkson review

Why are modern cars always in a flap about something? I started up this Porsche Cayenne S and was instantly met with a barrage of bongs, beeps and flashing warning lights.

“It looks like a beak on a rabbit”: Jeremy Clarkson reviews the Porsche Cayenne S.

On my first day with the Porsche Cayenne S, I climbed aboard, started the engine, popped it into reverse and damn nearly had a heart attack. Beeps and sirens were coming at me from hidden speakers all over the car. The dash was lit up like the cockpit of a doomed airliner. The hull was breached. A wing had come off. There was a bomb in one of the torpedo tubes. Hostiles were inbound and no one had thought to secure the perimeter.

But no. This was just the car’s on-board safety systems detecting all sorts of hazards that weren’t actually hazards at all. My barn, for example. It had seen that and figured I was bound to reverse into it at the highest possible speed. And was that a dog behind that hedge? Better to be safe than sorry. Sound the alarm. I was in my yard, for Christ’s sake, in the Cotswolds. But the Porsche thought it was in Fukushima with a wave on the way.

If you’ve been in any car built over the past couple of years, you’ll have experienced this sort of thing for yourself. You get beeped at when you open the door and then beeped at again when you close it. Then you’re going along a motorway and some idiotic piece of software suddenly applies the brakes because it’s convinced that a bridge it has just spotted is about to collapse. Or it yanks the wheel out of your hand because you’ve just changed lanes without indicating. Or it’s started bonging at you because it thinks you should pull over and have a cup of coffee. My colleague recently reviewed a Toyota that told him to sit up straight as he was driving along because it couldn’t detect his face. How mad is that?

Now you might think, as I did, that all this nannying has been creeping into our cars because new technology is always deployed whether we need it or not. But if that’s the case, why did the Porsche come with a laminated card from the company’s press ­office explaining how to disable everything? Why fit a safety ­device and then explain to journalists how to turn it off?

Inside the Porsche Cayenne S.

Well, it turns out that the car companies are simply doing what they’ve been ordered to do by the EU. Yup, the Brussels bureaucrats have announced that if a car company wishes to sell its products in Europe, it must come with a series of beeps and bongs and lights that flash every time it thinks the driver isn’t paying enough attention. Which is always.

Industry analysts are already saying that when all these expensive electronics are fitted it will no longer be possible to make a profit on small, cheap cars. So if you’re a hard-working family struggling with the cost-of-living crisis, I’m afraid you’ll be on the bus.

And nor will it be possible to make a car interesting. Already the Toyota GR86 has gone because the windscreen is not big enough to house all the necessary sensors. And things are only going to get worse. By which I mean safer. By which I mean worse. Soon we will have alcohol interlocks and speed sensors that physically prevent you from straying over the limit. And an on-board data recorder that can be used by the authorities to determine where you’ve been and what you did while you were there. I’m not sure that will save many lives. Marriages maybe.

Anyway, by using Porsche’s handy laminated card, I was able to stop the Cayenne S from worrying about crashing into a barn. I even stopped it beeping every time I did 41km/h in the village.

Then I could concentrate on it as a car. There’s just been a mild facelift but it’s still woefully dreary to behold. Porsche’s styling department (Wolfgang) continues to believe that you can put a quasi-911 nose on a large SUV and it will look OK. But that’s like putting a beak on a rabbit. It looks daft.

Things aren’t much better on the inside. It’s drab. That’s all I can say. But, and I guess this is why the Cayenne continues to be such a big seller, it does feel very well put ­together. I’ve only had my Range Rover a week and a note on the dash says the brake pads are worn. You get the sense in a Cayenne that the brake pads wouldn’t wear out for a thousand years.

And then there’s the engine, a V8 producing 349kW and 600Nm. Sounds exciting – and it is. But it’s a subdued excitement. It’s a good book rather than a Michael Bay blockbuster. The handling’s grown-up too, but you can hear the suspension working.

It’s not my cup of tea, this Porsche, but if you find the rivals a bit chintzy it may well be yours. Just remember to ask for the laminated instruction book on how to turn the EU off.

Porsche Cayenne S

ENGINE: 4.0-litre V8 twin-turbo petrol

PERFORMANCE: 0-100km/h 4.7 seconds, top speed 273km/h

PRICE: from $181,000

JEREMY’S RATING: hhh