Porsche Macan review: unnoticeable everywhere

You’ll spend a ton of money for a car which wasn’t much good even in the Bronze Age.

Porsche Macan, $82,200

I flew with many friends recently to a 40th birthday party that was being held in a gigantic tent near Siena, in Italy's Tuscany region. And after we landed, everyone began the trudge to the rental car desk for the keys to their scratched Fiat Uno, in which they'd spend the next couple of days wrestling with its strong tendency to pull to the left. And some unpleasant smells.

Me? Well, I was met by a beaming Italian chap holding a Porsche board. Only trouble was, it was a Macan, the smaller of the Porsche SUVs. And not only that, but it had a four-cylinder engine. So it was the cheapest version of one of the cheapest models.

I didn’t mind, however, because the last thing you want for a drive through Tuscany is a fast car. You want the journey to last for hours so you can savour the light and the endless valleys. You just want an air-conditioned space in which to sit and watch the view go by.

What was the car like? No idea, I’m afraid. I used it for three days and can’t remember a damn thing about it, but that’s OK, because when I got back to London there’d been a clerical error and the car waiting for me was, yup, another Macan. This one was an intense green, a colour designed so that the car positively leaps off the pages of those car magazines you read at the dentist’s. I absolutely adored it.

I liked the interior, too. The Macan has just been very mildly facelifted, so it has a light bar all the way across the back end – wow – and a new dash, which is pretty good. I especially like the way Porsche sticks to the principle, first used on the 928, of festooning every flat surface with buttons. And then putting half a dozen more in the roof. Men like buttons. They’re a measure of our place in life.

The engine, though, was something else. The diesel option has gone and a 2-litre petrol engine is now seen as the solution. But it isn’t, because in order to make it bear-friendly it’s controlled by algorithms that make acceleration possible only if you ram your foot through the firewall and push yourself along the road. You have to use a lot of accelerator to cause a change in speed, and even more if you want the seven-speed double-clutch gearbox to change down.

I’d like to say that this is solved if you push the Sport button, but it isn’t. There’s a similar problem with the “hard ride” button. It’s bumpy before you push it and bumpy afterwards. I think Porsche was so busy fitting buttons that it forgot to attach them to anything. Even the aircon Auto button does nothing but illuminate a small red light. Which, technically, warms things up a bit.

So it’s not a particularly inspiring car to drive, and not fast, and there isn’t much storage space. And while it has all-wheel drive, the low-profile tyres will spin pointlessly every time you drive into a horse show car park. And there’s more.

The Macan was unveiled in 2013, but it was actually based on the Audi Q5, which by that stage was five years old. There’s a new, updated Q5 now, but, incredibly, the Macan – even the most recent, facelifted version – is still based on the original. Which means it’s sitting on a platform that was designed when Tony Blair was in power.

And that original Q5 was not a good car. James May, Richard Hammond and I don’t agree on much, but we all agree that Audi’s mid-size school-run-mobile was about as bad and as bland as cars can be. It was like an ocean of wallpaper paste garnished with a layer of nothing at all.

Yes, you do get a Porsche badge on the Macan and you do have the option of that fabulous green paint. But, really, you’re spending a ton of money for a car whose underpinnings weren’t much good even in the Bronze Age. And what you end up with is a car that’s not just unnoticeable in Tuscany. It’s unnoticeable everywhere.

Porsche Macan

Engine: 2.0-litre turbo-petrol four-cylinder (185kW/370Nm)

Average fuel from 8.9 litres per 100km

Transmission: Seven-speed dual-clutch automatic, all-wheel drive

Price: $82,200

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars