2020 Porsche Cayenne Turbo

The privilege of owning the Cayenne Turbo doesn't come cheaply with a base MSRP of $126,500. This excludes options, tax, licensing, registration, and a delivery, processing, and handling fee of $1,350. The more powerful and much better equipped BMW X5 M Competition is over $10,000 cheaper at $114,100.

Along with Porsche's legendary chassis tuning, lots of technology has gone into making the large and heavy Cayenne as maneuverable as possible. Together with all-wheel-drive, the Turbo gets a standard adaptive air suspension with a self-leveling function and ride-height adjustment. The Porsche Active Suspension Management (PASM), meanwhile, continuously adjusts the damping force on individual wheels, depending on conditions and the driving style. Comfort, Sport, and Sport Plus modes can be specified. In addition, rear-axle steering can be had as an option to improve agility.

It all adds up to an SUV that really doesn't drive like an SUV. There's grip aplenty, the steering is crisp and accurate (requiring only moderate applications when paired with the rear-axle steering), and body roll is beautifully contained. With the optional Porsche Torque Vectoring Plus (PTV+) system, power is transferred from side to side to further enhance balance through twisty stretches. If you want a driver's SUV, you simply can't do better than this - the only black mark against the Cayenne is steering that's mostly devoid of feedback.

Impressively, none of the big SUV's dynamic agility comes at the expense of ride comfort. In Comfort mode, progress is unruffled and the Porsche irons out surface imperfections admirably. Along with its ability to keep road noise at bay, you can cover hundreds of miles in this Cayenne with ease. Standard on the Turbo is the new Porsche Surface Coated Brake (PSCB) - the discs get an extremely hard tungsten-carbide coating and special brake pads which the manufacturer claims amounts to a 30 percent longer life. The system certainly has no trouble reining in the Cayenne Turbo from high speeds.

The most successful vehicles tend to have one important virtue in common: people look at them and instantly know what they represent. The Ford F-150 is the default do-it-all truck, the Toyota Camry is a bulletproof family sedan, and the Mercedes-Benz S-Class is the luxury car benchmark. While the pricey Porsche Cayenne Turbo will never sell in the huge volumes of some of these cars, its identity is crystal clear: this is the best driver's SUV on the planet. It may have a large cabin and some off-road capability, but it's still a focused driver's machine, like every other Porsche. The Lamborghini Urus may have something to say about all of this, but its stratospheric price places it in another league altogether. In its latest form, the Cayenne Turbo is hellishly quick, it handles supremely well (and even better when equipped with Porsche's optional tech like the rear-axle steering), and has been styled to more closely resemble the iconic 911 - that can only be a good thing, of course. Other upsides to the Cayenne Turbo are the sturdy cabin, plentiful passenger space, and excellent comfort. Although some of the touch-sensitive controls can frustrate, and the cargo capacity is below-average, Porsche has built an SUV that engages the driver like few others. Mission accomplished, we'd say.

As you can probably tell by now, creating your ideal Cayenne Turbo is an expensive exercise. Through gritted teeth, we'd tick the box for the Premium Package Plus but, instead of the exorbitantly expensive Assistance Package, we'd choose the two or so driver aids that we want most - the head-up-display ($1,720) and the adaptive cruise control ($2,000) seem genuinely useful for everyday needs. We'd also want our Cayenne Turbo to perform as well as it can, so the Sport Chrono Package and the rear-axle steering are other options we'd add. Once you've tallied up all of these extras, the Cayenne Turbo will cost a dear $138,060 including destination, and that's just scraping the surface of an options list that can add many more tens of thousands of dollars to the final price.

The X5 M may be heavier than the Cayenne Turbo, but in the case of the X5 M Competition, it compensates with BMW's most powerful available engine: a 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 with 617 horsepower. The X5 M gets to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds and the Competition model does the same in 3.7 seconds, so both are just as quick as the Cayenne Turbo while costing over $10,000 less. The X5 gets BMW's M-tuned xDrive all-wheel-drive system which allows it to carry monstrous speeds through the bends, but it doesn't feel as agile as the more athletic Cayenne. Performance credentials aside, the X5 is the superior SUV because not only does it have much more cargo space (33.9 cubic feet behind the rear seats relative to the Cayenne's 26.2), but the X5 M also gets standard four-zone automatic climate control, hands-free tailgate opening, active blind-spot detection, surround-view cameras with 3D view, a full-color head-up display, and frontal collision warning, all of which are either optional or unavailable on the Cayenne. The Porsche is the better drive, but the X5 M offers more and gets the overall vote between these two.

It's the meanest Range Rover Sport you can get. The SVR boasts a 5.0-liter supercharged V8 with 575 horsepower, a swanky design that is also instantly recognizable as an SUV from one of the purveyors of the concept, and a 0-60 mph time of 4.3 seconds. Okay, so the Cayenne Turbo is quite a bit faster and has superior on-road dynamics, but the SVR is also a comfortable luxury chariot and will go further than the Cayenne can off-road (for example, the Porsche's wading depth of 20.8 inches doesn't come close to the SVR's 33.5 inches). The SVR's supercharged V8 also makes an intoxicating noise. Both have classy cabins with plenty of room for five and acres of soft leather mixed with metal and wood accents. Once again, though, the Cayenne Turbo falls short in terms of its standard specification. As with the BMW X5 M, the Cayenne Turbo's superiority is in its capability on-road, but the SVR is sheer theatre, costs less, has more equipment on board, and it's got the brand's legendary off-road prowess to boot.