Enlarge / It’s all too easy to go nuts with the Porsche option list and spend a fortune, but what if you didn’t do that? (credit: Michael Teo Van Runkle)

Porsche’s high-performance variants of the 911 might make for great headlines, proving the incredible potential of the world’s most iconic rear-engined sports car to serve as a track toy and off-road rally racer simultaneously. But while motorsport heritage always factors into any Porsche conversation, the 911 is anything but the top rung of the company’s sales ladder. Instead, the Cayenne and then Macan SUVs have led the pack in volume since 2002, bolstering the company’s financial position and allowing the smaller-scale 911s and 718s to continue production.

For model year 2024, the facelifted third-gen Cayenne now comes in seven trim levels, including the technologically advanced and startlingly quick Turbo E-Hybrid, which offers 35 miles of all-electric range and a 3.5-second sprint to 60 mph. And yet a base V6 Cayenne offers a far more attainable entree into what it’s like to own something other than a fully loaded, paint-to-sample uber-Porsche that can easily cost well over $200,000.

Revisiting the Cayenne SUV

A V6-powered Cayenne starts at $79,200, or almost $20,000 more than the smaller gasoline-powered Macan crossover. But the larger platform allows for a more refined vision of Porsche luxury on the interior, with more headroom, legroom, and cargo capacity. Despite the additional size, however, the latest iteration of the Cayenne never sacrifices the spirit that originally put the Sport in Sport Utility Vehicle. And even a small-displacement turbo V6 still delivers the highlights of Porsche performance, engineering, and reliability.