2022 Porsche Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo

The astonishingly good Taycan Cross Turismo is as close as a Porsche has ever come to being the car that can do everything… Words Matt Robinson. Photography Barry Hayden.

MASTER OF ALL TRADES

Introducing the Taycan Cross Turismo.

What a car the Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo is. Seriously. It’s like Zuffenhausen’s head honchos took one look at the growing electric vehicle (EV) market and thought, how can we ruin the fun of all of our competitors in one fell swoop? Honestly, if you thought the saloon-bodied Taycan was good, this thing will blow your mind.

It launches off the back of the immense goodwill already generated by Porsche’s four-door EV, a vehicle which has swiftly become one of the company’s top sellers in the UK, despite an avant-garde form of propulsion. Perhaps the real master-stroke of this latest development in the Taycan story is the fact Porsche didn’t just decide to go Sport Turismo (as it did with the Panamera), but instead liberally applied SUV-styling to create a Cross Turismo.

Those of you who can remember a prepandemic world will know the decision was presaged by the Mission E Cross Turismo concept exhibited at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show, but even so, for Porsche to actually go ahead and build this Swiss Army knife of a machine is still a brilliant move on the part of the Stuttgart brand.

The Taycan Cross Turismo uses the same platform and same electric running gear as the saloon models, but unlike the ‘regular’ Taycan (and in a move founded in pure common sense), there will be no rear-wheel-drive Taycan Cross Turismo — this is an off-roading estate, as opposed to being a pure ‘on-asphalt’ machine.

This means the Cross Turismo product line-up is entirely equipped with Porsche Traction Management (PTM) all-wheel drive, delivered by two electric motors, one sitting on each axle. In turn, this means the Cross Turismo family can also boast two reduction-gear transmissions: a single-speed item on the leading wheels and a two-speed set-up on the trailing axle. Furthermore, the model’s twin motors need to be fed by the larger 93.4kWh (83.7kWh net) lithium-ion, double-deck battery pack, leaving the smaller single-deck, 79kWh (71kWh net) unit for the saloon Taycans alone.

SPOILED FOR CHOICE

The Cross Turismo family starts with the 4-badged model at £79,340, rising to the Taycan 4S Cross Turismo at £87,820 and then segueing into the same toptier badges as the saloon: the decidedly non-turbocharged Turbo and Turbo S. We’re driving the former here, from £116,950, but if you want the ultimate in Porsche do-everything EV transportation, the Taycan Turbo S Cross Turismo has a basic starting price of £139,910. In essence, a Cross Turismo is around £1,100 to £4,000 more expensive than its equivalent saloon model, which, all things considered, isn’t a huge premium.

Visually, the first obvious change is the Cross Turismo’s longer roof and sloping rear hatch. This provides an additional 47mm of headroom for passengers seated in the rear of the Porsche, as well as increasing the cargo capacity from the Taycan Turbo saloon’s 366 litres to a satisfying 405 litres. The same 84-litre ‘frunk’ is retained and, if you fold down the rear seats of the Cross Turismo, then 1,171 litres of carrying capacity is on offer. Clearly, by the standards of today’s estates, this figure isn’t massive, but the Cross Turismo is a lifestyle-focused wagon, not the sort of vehicle which should be doing tip runs and lugging flatpack furniture from Ikea to home. The idea is that mountain bikes and kayaks and skis go in the back. Although not all at once, obviously.

Lower down, the Cross Turismo gives away its off-road abilities with black plastic cladding around the wheel arches, continuing through the bumpers. There are also silver skid plates to spot, sitting centrally fore and aft, plus the Cross Turismo boasts its own design of alloy wheels (available as twenty inchers, as well as twenty-ones). Any Taycan Cross Turismo has a Gravel mode for moderate driving duties away from metalled surfaces and models sit a further 20mm off the deck when compared to Porsche’s EV saloon, although an optional Off- Road Package (ORP) increases this ride height by another 10mm to give an overall 30mm of extra ground clearance.

You can spot an ORP-equipped Cross Turismo if you peer carefully at its bumpers and side sills — extra spats of plastic at the outer reaches of the front and rear skirting, as well as at the trailing edge of the sills, give the game away. However you cut it, though, the Taycan Cross Turismo looks fantastic, especially in the Cherry Metallic paint our tester wore, and you can top the lot off with a set of roof rails (£413) if you want the full ‘adventure lifestyle’ look.

SAME DIFFERENCE

Inside, apart from the extra headroom for rear-seat passengers — which, we have to say, is quite noticeable and most welcome when you’re sitting behind a tall driver’s seating position — the Cross Turismo’s cabin is almost identical to that of the Taycan saloon. Sure, the clock on the dashtop is actually a compass (a £252 option) and you’ll spot Gravel mode if delve into the drive settings using the rotary dial on the Turbo’s steering wheel, but other than these deviations, everything is much like the Taycan interior we’re familiar with. In other words, this is a terrific cabin: there’s the dazzling 16.8-inch Curved Display forming the instrument cluster, the 10.9-inch Porsche Communication Management (PCM) main screen is pin-sharp and a delight to use, and even the 8.4-inch climate control ‘pad’ lower down the centre console works brilliantly. Option the Passenger Display for another £725 and another 10.9-inch item is slotted into the fascia, giving the Taycan’s interior a truly show-stopping air.

If there’s any criticism of the driving position, it’s only that the 30mm elevation in your eye point doesn’t feel immediately apparent once you’re installed behind the wheel. We like to drive every car, from base model to galumphing great SUV, with the seat set as low as is physically possible, but even so, you’d expect the Cross Turismo to give the sensation it rides a little higher than the saloon-bodied Taycan. It’s a minor gripe from us, but one you should be aware of if you’re buying this EV estate on the strength of its semi-command driving position above all other considerations.

As with the saloon, this Turbo gives nothing away to the flagship Turbo S in normal driving. Indeed, unless you activate Launch Control and enjoy the time-limited, 2.5-second hit of ‘overboost’, then the twin motors of the Cross Turismo dish out a robust 460kW (616bhp in our preferred metric). The Turbo rises to 500kW (671bhp) and 627lb-ft torque with the aforementioned overboost active, numbers a tad down on the Turbo S equivalents of 751bhp and 775lb-ft, but you won’t be left wanting by the Cross Turismo’s speed when you glance at the on-paper stats. Granted, it’s ninety kilograms heavier than a Taycan Turbo, but on a vehicle which weighs in excess of 2.3 tonnes, a mere 3.9 percent increase in mass is hardly detrimental to the astounding performance this zero-emissions drivetrain can serve up. Expect 0-62mph in 3.3 seconds, 0-100mph in seven seconds dead, 0-124mph in an outrageous 10.7 seconds and 50- 75mph — perhaps the most telling claim revealing the Porsche’s potency — in a searing 1.9 seconds.

You won’t notice that marginal extra ballast in having the more practical rear of the Cross Turismo when you fully light it up — it remains an extraordinarily fast car, almost otherworldly in the way it transmits its enormous power to the road in fuss-free fashion, instantly. Yes, fast-accelerating EVs with their insta-access torque are much more commonplace these days than they were five or so years ago, but the comedy violence of the Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo’s full acceleration remains genuinely startling. You don’t need Launch Control activated to experience the force of it either, because the Porsche will snap your head back into the seat’s restraint if you ask for anything more than half throttle from low speeds. The Cross Turismo also sounds good with the optional Porsche Electric Sport Sound (PESS, £354) fitted, the overlaid eerie whoop of the Taycan’s amplified electric motors providing a suitable backing track for the demented pace of the thing.

MIND BENDING

Brilliance is how the Cross Turismo seems to lose next to nothing in terms of cornering ability when compared to the Taycan saloon, yet manages to add extra ride comfort and refinement. That’s really saying something when you consider the older Taycan is one of the comfiest, quietest cars you can travel in today. Also, on taxing roads in the vicinity of the Goodwood Estate, we couldn’t discern any notable deficiency to body control nor turn-in. Okay, if you really, really concentrate hard, you might sense the Cross Turismo is ever so slightly less eager to get tucked into the apex of a corner, which means it’s probably not the default choice for a spot of trackday work (what EV is, though?), but for a 2.4-tonne machine, it grips, steers and goes in a manner it has precious little right to. And it doesn’t feel like a lot of mechanical and electronic trickery is managing a huge amount of weight, a sensation you often experience in many of today’s high-performance SUVs.

There are, of course, plenty of techno-tricks to the Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo. For example, it makes use of the same twin-axle air suspension with Porsche Active Suspension Management (PASM), Porsche Torque Vectoring Plus (PTV Plus), rear electronically controlled limitedslip differential and Porsche Surface Coated Brakes (PSCB) as the Taycan Turbo. Our test car was also fitted with Rear-Axle Steering (including Power Steering Plus, £1,650) to further boost its agility and manoeuvrability, but you can’t deny the inherent genius of its steering feel, the natural way its brakes transition from energy recuperation duties to actual pad-on- disc stopping power, nor the general rightness of calibration of all its controls.

This Porsche is incredible fun and deeply talented as a performance car — exactly as a Porsche should be, of course — but then it’s utterly majestic for quiet, serene cruising. The taller, softer suspension does round off what few edges the Taycan’s ride might possess, to the point that a set of the larger twenty-one-inch alloys (with a fabulous blade-like appearance) cannot upset the Turbo’s composure for the slightest instant, even when crossing particularly poor surfaces. Get the acoustically insulated glass (from £947) and you hear almost nothing of the outside world flowing past the Porsche’s passenger compartment, even when travelling at rapid pace.

Of course, this cool crossover isn’t just good at the dynamic stuff. Like any Taycan, the Cross Turismo’s 800- volt electrical architecture allows for DC charging on a connection of up to 270kW, which means you’ll get 62.1 miles of range in little more than five minutes of hook-up, while a re-juice from five percent to eighty percent at the same rate will require only 22.5 minutes. Even on a more prevalent (yet slower) 50kW DC connection, you can enjoy 62.1 miles of extra range in less than half-hour and the same charge to eighty percent takes ninety-three minutes. Admittedly, a WLTP-quoted driving distance of between 245 and 281 miles gives an indication of the Cross Turismo’s taller, heavier constitution, but it’s still among the modern-day electric vehicles that’ll go the furthest in real-world driving conditions, making it about as practical as practical can be.

And therein lies the rub. We’re all told the internal combustion engine’s days are numbered and, as car enthusiasts, it would be easy for us to become despondent, but if the future is all-electric, then machines as glitteringly exceptional as the Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo mean zero-emissions motoring isn’t going to be a wasteland bereft of all driver enjoyment. In fact, this is the long-term future of performance driving, only it’s available to buy right now. At £116,950 basic, it isn’t cheap, and if you’ve been totting up the extras on our German demonstrator, you’ll be aware the £140,000 list price of the Turbo S is hoving alarmingly into view, but this is a Porsche which does everything superbly, a jack of all trades and a master of them, too. The outstanding Taycan Cross Turismo is, without doubt, nothing short of a dream car and, importantly, proof the next age of Porsche promises to be just as special as the one on the verge of passing into history.

Above and below Away from the 911, Porsches are renowned for offering performance and practicality in equal measure, a tradition upheld by the Taycan Cross Turismo. Above With the Taycan Cross Turismo, has Porsche finally developed a world-first: an EV which looks like a ‘regular’ car, free of fussy styling and ‘look at me, I’m an EV’ identifying accents?

AMONG THE MODERN-DAY EVs THAT’LL GO THE FURTHEST IN REAL-WORLD DRIVING CONDITIONS, MAKING IT ABOUT AS PRACTICAL AS PRACTICAL CAN BE

TECH SPEC

Model Porsche Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo

Price Taycan Cross Turismo range from £79,340, Turbo as tested from £116,95Engine Twin permanent magnet synchronous electric motors (one on each axle) plus 93.4kWh lithium-ion battery pack, single-speed reduction-gear transmission front, two-speed reduction-gear transmission rear, Porsche Traction Management (PTM) four-wheel drive with Porsche Torque Vectoring Plus (PTV Plus) electronically controlled rear limited-slip differentialEconomy 22.6-25.9kWh/62.1 miles, electric range 245-281 milesCO2 emissions 0g/kmTop speed 155mph0-62mph 3.3 secondsPower 616bhp regular, 671bhp on ‘overboost’ Launch ControlTorque 627lb-ft

Below Cross Turismo trim loses nothing of the Taycan’s luxury, but encourages more daring driving. Above Cherry Metallic looks good on all Porsches, especially bigger-bodied models, such as the Taycan and Panamera.