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Received some photos from our SA as our Turbo rolled off the truck this morning. It looks like most of the important bits are there -- four tires, seats and a steering wheel. We plan to pick it up Thursday. We're on our way!
As you can see, we sprung for the Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur Repurposed Pulp Armrests in Luxor Beige. They delayed our build a little and at $2500 were not cheap, but we think they really add a unique flavor to the interior. Plus, they're eco-friendly, just like the engine!
I'll come back around and post more later this week. In the meantime, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everybody here. You folks have added a lot of positivity to our first-time Porsche buying experience.
I especially like the paint protection film. I thought the pulp armrests were included in the delivery, processing and handling package. I'll be curious as to what you think of the truffle brown/cohiba brown interior. I'm getting the same interior in my Turbo. It's supposed to be at the dealer January 11th. As long as you've been waiting for this, it should make for a very Merry Christmas.
Last edited by BOCO; 12-25-2018 at 11:41 AM.
Reason: typo
We picked it up Thursday. Pics are inline -- smears and blurs in the paint are not flaws, but leftover haze from a fresh wax. A few quick thoughts from a Porsche newbie (I'll post more later, after we've wrapped our heads around the thing):
Moonlight Blue is an interesting color. It looks black in dim / overcast light, and a deep, royal blue in direct sunlight. I included a shot of the Cayenne in our garage, in the background to our metallic black SS, so you can see a direct comparison. Garage lights are 5000K.
Sport Exhaust on the Turbo sounds badass, particularly at startup and at full throttle (I've only gotten on the throttle hard a few times, and then for a few seconds, in deference to Porsche's totally amorphous break-in recommendations). The exhaust sounds throaty and powerful inside and outside the car with the baffles open. Even with them closed, it sounds pretty darned good, and much different than the tractor-like noises I've heard when playing Turbo YouTube videos with the stock exhaust. For us, it was $3500 well spent.
We blacked out everything -- window trim, roof rails, exhaust tips, door handles and side mirrors. We also added clear tails. My wife chose these herself. I think they add to the aggressiveness of the car substantially. It looks... sinister.
Truffle / Cohiba club leather smells wonderful, and looks rich, particularly with the Sport seats. We added carbon trim, including the steering wheel and illuminated door sills. The latter sort of finish off the interior for us.
No rattles or squeaks. So far it feels like driving a big chunk of granite, to pull out that tired cliche. But it's appropriate. We are both very impressed by how solid and expensive-feeling the car is. It drives like we think at $150K car should. No disappointment there.
PCCB look otherworldly, especially on the front, where those 17.3" rotors and 10-piston yellow calipers almost seem fake. We've already heard some noises, so buyer beware. (We went in with our eyes open, as much as we could, so we're okay with some racket from time to time.) The brake pedal is so solid and linear it's almost like there's no hydraulics at play. Porsche makes some spectacular brakes.
Fit and finish are decent. Panel gaps are pretty even. Two rubber edge seals on the roof near the back weren't installed fully, and I can't squeeze them back in, as they ride into a channel I can't see. Otherwise, I'd give it a good rating here. (Don't forget to remove your wiper arm cover and reattach it properly by snapping on the end guide to the right first, then rotating it down to the left until it clicks on. Ours was sort of laying on there, just like nearly all the other Cayennes and Panameras at our dealer. How hard is it to ensure this happens at the factory, Porsche?)
Paint quality is good. No orange-peel. Finish is lustrous, smooth and deep.
ParkAssist does not include the cool pinch-to-spin 360-degree rotating view the Europeans get. Nor does it include curb alerting. It does, however, show a pretty good view of your wheels on the ground, so it'd be easy to see if you're about tear up your $2500 rim at the Chick-Fil-A drive-through. See photo below.
I can tell the electronics / PCM are going to be the weak point of the car, reliability-wise. I had a helluva time getting Homelink programmed to our rolling-code garage door opener. The same process took five minutes in no fewer than SIX other cars we've owned with the same garage door openers. At one point, the whole PCM went wiggy and presented me with a completely blue 12.3" center screen. No amount of jiggering / restarting would fix it. Since this was the first night we brought it home, I was beyond unhappy at the thought of a hardware failure right out of the gate. I decided to do a hard power-off of the entire car, which is two-minute process in the Cayenne.
Remove the passenger-side floormat.
Open the access panel for the core lithium-ion battery.
Take a 10 mm socket and remove the negative cable. Wait 20 seconds.
Replace the cable, put everything back together, and turn the car to On while praying to the Gods of Stuttgart the effing screen isn't actually dead. Take a sigh of relief as the screen comes back online, then get a little pissy as you have to restore all your presets and programming.
Did the system fritz out while I was wrestling with sensing and programming Homelink? Maybe. Porsche may have a reputation for building bulletproof mechanicals. But maybe they should've outsourced the electronics to the Japanese. I think they may be a little over their heads here. Note that someone else posted a thread about a solid red screen. I have no idea what came of that -- he never followed up. It's possible a hard reboot would've fixed his problem too -- at least temporarily. I'll check with our SA regarding the PCM recall. A firmware update may resolve these types of issues, now or in the future.
The car is scary fast for an SUV, or any other car with four wheels. Again, I haven't gotten on it fully, or for very long, but a quick jab of the throttle to 3/4 on the highway led to a push-back-in-your-seat rush that ended up with me at 110 (!) before I realized just how license-losing fast we were going. Effortless. Gonna have to be very careful to keep our records clear.
The car handles better than we expected, even without the active rollbars or rear steering. It rides well, too -- I credit the air suspension and PASM for that. I'm a believer in active dampers, having test-driven other cars back-to-back with and without them. (We purchased our SS only after GM included magnetorheological shocks from the Corvette on the car two years into the model run. Without them, it rode like a damned coal cart, so we passed.) Executed properly, they can transform a suspension into something far more compliant than it has any right to be.
We like the stock Turbo wheels better than we thought we would. They're unique, and show the PCCB off something fierce. Easy to clean, and you can't beat the price.
My wife is over the moon about her car. She loves everything about it. We felt like rock stars at the dealer as we were going over everything with our SA for about an hour as it was parked out front. Two people asked pointedly if the car was for sale. Good stuff.
Porsche checked all the boxes but one with this car as far as we're concerned. We shall see if it lives up to the company's reputation for reliability. Fingers crossed.
Sorry for the amateur-quality of my iPhone photos. I am an amateur, see, using an iPhone.
Wow, amazing! Thanks for posting. Parking features seem to be good enough. Bummer we did not get the full version but neither did Europeans. It's not available anywhere yet - from my highly uncertain sources the next gen parking system is delayed for all models due to some issues with the supplier (Bosch) and/or integration. Anyway, seeing the edge of wheels is going to help.
Do you have the towing package? If yes, does it come with trailer maneuvering assist? I'm worried that it might be delayed along with the advanced parking tech, which would be a huge bummer (I want to tow, but I suck at maneuvering a trailer).
I would not worry too much about electronics issues. My launch model of the previous gen Turbo was also really bad initially - for example, the amplifier would freeze, so the car would not make any sounds, and would drain the battery if the car was left parked with it frozen. But a couple of software updates fixed pretty much all of the issues. It's just software. I'd go for PCCBs as well, looking at those pics (so badass), but I want to be able to use smaller wheels for winter.
Also liking the club/natural leather. I wonder if this combo would look good with Biscay. Due to PSCB delay, my car can still be changed...
I have been flip-flopping between Black, Moonlight Blue and Quartzite Grey and I thought I have settled for Black.
Looking at your car makes me re-considering of Moonlight Blue again.
12-24-2018, 03:36 PM
Undercover Turbo snuck in
I'll be curious as to what you think of the truffle brown/cohiba brown interior. I'm getting the same interior in my Turbo. It's supposed to be at the dealer January 11th. As long as you've been waiting for this, it should make for a very Merry Christmas.
