Weeks from the world premiere in China, the next Macan is being tested in grueling conditions.
The odds are good that most people who buy the Porsche Macan will never drive on an unpaved road and even fewer will do any serious off-roading in their German luxury-sport utility vehicle. However, the company wants to make sure that the refreshed Macan can do anything that any other comparable SUV can do, so in case a buyer wants to go off-roading in the mountains of South Africa – Porsche knows that this new vehicle will shine in the dirt.
The New Macan
Later this month, the 2019 Porsche Macan will be introduced in China and while this is not an all-new vehicle, the company has stated that the sleek SUV is “extensively revised” while being “significantly enhanced in terms of its design, comfort, connectivity and driving dynamics”. In other words, the new Porsche SUV will have a new exterior look, an even nicer interior with more high-tech gadgets and improved performance in every situation.
For most drivers, all of those driving situations will involve a paved road, but some Macan drivers will have to deal with dirt roads and high-altitude while others will inexplicably buy a Porsche SUV to go off-roading. With those buyers in mind, the automaker took a fleet of the revised sport utility vehicles to South Africa for some torture testing less than two weeks before the grand debut.
Extreme Conditions
To test the 2019 Macan in the most grueling possible conditions for this time of year, the team headed to Lesotho, South Africa, where they were able to push these vehicles to their limits at elevations reaching 12,000 feet above sea level. Elevation like that has much thinner air, making it harder for combustion engines to make proper power, so not only were they making sure that the new Porsche would handle rocky terrain and loose, dirt roads but they ensured that the new Macan performed well in those conditions with the thin air.
The company didn’t offer any information on the testing, but in addition to announcing that this grueling, high-altitude testing was taking place, the German automaker offered up some great pictures of the refreshed sport utility machine at work in South Africa.
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"Although I went to college for accounting, my time in my dad’s shop growing up allowed me the knowledge to spend time working as a mechanic before getting my accounting degree, at which point I worked in the office of a dealership group. While I was working in the accounting world, I continued racing and taking pictures of cars at the track. Over time, I began showing off those pictures online and that led to my writing.
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