2011 Porsche Cayenne Hybrid Review

The 2011 Porsche Cayenne Hybrid. Green with grins.

The very idea of a Porsche hybrid takes some big-time explaining for a lot of people. A $67,700 Porsche hybrid SUV even more so.

The Porsche Cayenne is the SUV in question, and to a lot of Porsche purists, it was the Porsche that wasn't supposed to be built anyway. It was counter to the marque's mission of building laser-focused sports cars with 2 doors and low centers of gravity.

But the Cayenne has been a success. Porsche builds a lot of them and has built market share squarely on its broad shoulders. And since powerful SUVs have taken the biggest hit when gas prices get squirrely, wouldn't they be the perfect place to employ a little hybrid technology?

The 2011 Porsche Cayenne Hybrid. A few extra MPG for a couple extra Gs.

Hybrid luxo-SUVs aren't new anyway...three years ago, when TireKicker was a toddler, we spent in a week in and then wrote about the Cadillac Escalade Hybrid...which, in 2008 was 5 grand more than this year's Porsche Cayenne S Hybrid.  The Porsche has the edge on performance (0-60 in 6.1 seconds), handling (elementary physics) and, as it turns out, gas mileage, though neither of them pump up the EPA estimates to Prius levels.

In fact, the Hybrid Cayenne S only gets about 2 miles more per gallon in the city and on the highway  (20/24) than the non-hybrid version. But Porsche only charges a couple of grand more to make the gas/electric leap.

The 2011 Porsche Cayenne Hybrid Interior. You could get used to this.

$67,700 might strike you as something of a bargain for the Cayenne S Hybrid...and you're right. For what you get, that's a fairly compelling base price. But with Porsche, the difference between base price and as-tested price often jumps by the price of a loaded Honda Fit once you get into the optional equipment. And that's what happened to our test vehicle. About $16,000 worth of options got poured onto and into the machine ($4520 of it for the Convenience Package alone), for an endgame (including destination charges of $84,950.

Yes, that's very different from $67,700, but it's not out of the territory for Porsche buyers...who, with the Porsche Cayenne S Hybrid, get arguably the best of all worlds: An SUV that saves a bit of gas and a bit of the planet because it's a hybrid, and is a Porsche.

Try as you might (and a lot of journalists have tried very hard the past few years to poke holes in the Cayenne), it's tough to find fault with the finished product. It works like an SUV, goes and handles like a Porsche (okay, the center of gravity does affect things...but there's no other SUV that can play in the twisties like this one) and the hybrid system is unobtrusive.  A dealer-accompanied half-hour test drive will have you wanting one. A week unsupervised (as we got) just makes it worse. If Porsche sent it back to us tomorrow, we'd be happy campers.

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2011 GMC Acadia Denali Review

The 2011 GMC Acadia Denali.

Almost 20 years ago,  I bought a GMC Suburban (now known as the Yukon XL). In those days, there was nothing to differentiate the GMC from the Chevrolet except for the badges and the price tag. GMC's was generally a bit more, but I found a dealer who beat all the local Chevy dealers.

It occurred to me at the time that GMC could do very well for itself by making its Suburban a much more luxurious piece than the Chevrolet...leather seats, say...and how about upgraded audio systems? Maybe automatic climate control. Nicer wheels...maybe even a sunroof.

Hard to imagine now, but this was radical thinking at the time, though within 5 years, GM embraced the concept beyond what I was thinking. The GMC version became almost Cadillac-like in its luxury...and then came Cadillac's Escalade, taking it all one giant leap further. And they sold like hot cakes.

The Suburban, Yukon XL and Escalade ESV are all still in production, and still sell, but the strike zone has moved to smaller machines. That's not keeping GM from going back to the playbook for what worked so well a decade and a half ago.

Behold the GMC Acadia Denali. The base Acadia is a reasonably priced vehicle...$32,000. And it's very much like the $29,370 Chevy Traverse. The Denali fixes that...for a price.

Rear three-quarters view of the 2011 GMC Acadia Denali.

The all-wheel-drive Acadia Denali we tested starts at $45,220. 13 grand and change more than the vehicle that underpins it all. And not a penny of it is under the hood. The base Acadia has the exact same 3.6 liter V6 mated to a 6-speed automatic as the Denali.

There's two inches less front headroom and one inch less in the rear, thanks to the standard sunroof,  and you can carry one fewer person thanks to the standard second-row buckets. Otherwise, the dimensions and statistics are the same.

So where's the $13K? On the outside, it's in fog lamps, Xenon HID headlamps, a remote tailgate release, heated exterior mirrors, chrome wheels, performance tires, a trailer hitch reciever and a Denali-specific grille.

The 2011 GMC Acadia Denali interior.

Inside, the Denali steps up with a rear-view camera (always a good idea, especially in SUVs), rear parking assist, dual zone climate control, remote vehicle start, the aforementioned sunroof, power heated driver and front passenger seats, the 2nd row buckets, memory seats, a premium sound system, rear seat audio controls, Bluetooth, a universal home remote control, leather-wrapped steering wheel, auto-dimming rear-view mirror with memory and a power lift gate.

That plus all-wheel drive, which is worth about two grand, so yeah...that's probably about $11,000 worth of options. And our tester had more...$1,890 for nav with 3 months of SiriusXM NavTraffic, $1,445 for a rear seat DVD entertainment center, including headphones, and $795 for White Diamond Tricoat paint (which is very pretty). Bottom line on ours after destination charges: $50,125.

I can't knock the end result...a very luxurious, well mannered, fast, capable SUV. I'm even okay with the price. And the mileage is in the ballpark, too: 16 city/23 highway. What I don't get is why GMC sells an Acadia other than the Denali. Unlike the Yukon/Escalade and Yukon XL/Escalade ESV deal, Cadillac doesn't have a clone of this model...so why bother selling the $32,000 version at all? Why not let that be Chevy's?  If you've got thoughts on that one, I'd love to hear them. Just click the "comments" button.

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