Porsche Taycan Turbo S Cross Turismo

Sometimes you find yourself witnessing a significant step in the development of the car. This is such a time. There is now only before and after the Porsche Taycan Turbo S Cross Turismo.

We like to exaggerate a bit at TopGear, that is clear. Throwing funny metaphors, blowing things up or taking things out of context – it’s all up to us. We like. But you have to believe us when we say that’s not what’s happening here. Porsche’s latest EV is really the next chapter. Well you can, because this is the most expensive electric production car you can buy right now – excluding dream exotics and castles in the air with a zillion horsepower. For 193,200 euros you get a Porsche Taycan Turbo S Cross Turismo in the Netherlands. Please note: because it is an EV, there is no BPM on it, so it is not that the price is artificially high here (in Belgium it just costs 192,581 euros).

Folding mirrors

And then you haven’t started working with the options list yet. This is so extensive that even at Porsche they do not always come out: someone there apparently forgot to order electrically folding mirrors on our fully loaded test car. Funny – until, like us, you try to park your wall-to-wall Taycan in a narrow garage. That you can’t just get something like this for this amount is typical Porsche, but it remains a bit shabby. As if you still have to pay a euro for the cloakroom after your five-course dinner in a star restaurant.

But the Taycan Cross Turismo is so mesmerizing that you’ll never be bothered by these kinds of details for long. The ordinary four-door Taycan is already an impressive machine to behold: low, long, but also so broad-shouldered that it appears compact. It’s kind of like a slick, futuristic superpad, as irreverent as that sounds – crouched, stocky and muscular. It is a design that lends itself perfectly to a modest roof extension, and Porsche was smart to immediately combine this intervention with new exterior bold accents and a modified chassis. Hence also ‘Cross Turismo’, not ‘Sport Turismo’ as with the Panamera.

Gravel button

The intention is that you can really go off-road with this Taycan. Here in the Netherlands, where you can drive less than three meters on unpaved roads without encountering a closed gate or an angry forester, we take that as a warning. The Gravel button remains untouched by us, but we fully enjoy the other features of the Taycan Cross Turismo.

Take the chassis. Air suspension (standard even – how is it possible?), but clearly tuned to the newly developed character of this Porsche: slightly less sports car, more living car. It takes 2.3 tons of vehicle weight by the scrapes and allows it to float in a controlled manner over bumps, smoothing out unsightly asphalt and eliminating the tendency to sag. Thunder down a speed bump and bam: everything is immediately perfectly horizontal, as if a heavy hand catches you from above and straightens it. It is almost scary effective, and together with the exemplary isolation it brings the occupants almost limitless tranquility. And that in the fastest accelerating production station wagon in the world – that’s saying something.

The fastest?

Because yes, of course the first Cross Turismo that Porsche lets us come into contact with is not a Taycan 4 with small rims. It is nothing less than the Porsche Taycan Turbo S Cross Turismo, 761 hp and 1,050 Nm strong and 2.9 seconds from 0 to 100 km/h. That’s not the fastest sprint time for a Porsche (it’s 0.1 second slower than the regular Taycan Turbo S and a turtle-like 0.2 second slower than the 911 Turbo S). But we’re going to take a guess and claim that even the biggest number fetishist wouldn’t be too concerned about that. Not when he tries desperately to prevent his spine from pushing his stomach contents out.

If this kind of power ever becomes widely available, we suspect that human evolution will be seriously affected. Tougher membranes, stronger guts, bigger hands for better gripping on things. Even almost ten years after the introduction of the Tesla Model S (which is even much faster in the form of the three-motor Plaid…), this kind of constant and instantaneous acceleration does not want to get used to. Don’t let it get boring. In the Taycan, it goes like this: find an empty stretch of road, stop the car, click the dial on the steering wheel in Sport Plus, your left foot on the brake, your right foot down full, make sure your passengers are not holding anything with which they could injure themselves, let go of your left foot and watch the world approach you like a mad Windows 98 screensaver.

Fast systems

The amazing thing is that you can feel what the car is doing to bring about this extreme displacement. If your tires aren’t perfectly warm and sticky, several of your wheels will definitely lose traction during this trick. But where in other drivetrains the electronics react as soon as a wheel spins, the Taycan seems to sense when this will happen – and knows how to prevent it. Sometimes it’s like doing your sprint on ice: there seems to be no friction, because your tires are right on the border between grip and slip. But you can keep your foot down carefree, because the car solves it, painstakingly and flawlessly.

He does the same in corners. When you’ve come to terms with the fact that something so big and heavy can go around corners so hard, and have brain capacity left to register how it does it, you feel that each wheel gets a measured, constantly adjusted dose of torque. That way it doesn’t even have the chance to take a step wrong. Unless that’s exactly what you want, of course.

The driving experience of the Porsche Taycan Turbo S Cross Turismo

But the most clever thing is that Porsche manages to seamlessly link this new-fangled witchcraft – and this high BMI value – to the driving experience on which their reputation, their entire existence, has been built. Precision can be boring, but as in other Porsches, everything clicks together in this Taycan: the chassis, the solid and reactive steering, the seating position in the grippy seats, the driving Sport Sound that reverberates from the speakers in the sportier modes. Even the two-speed transmission on the rear axle, useful for both acceleration and reducing energy consumption, downshifts with something that feels and sounds like an intermediate throttle. Or maybe we are so absorbed in the experience that we imagine it.

Admittedly, we could have written these last things about the four-door Taycan. What makes the Cross Turismo extra attractive, of course, are its practical qualities. Where someone from 1.85 meters in the back of the sedan should not have too pointy haircut, the extended roof of the Cross Turismo provides a few welcome extra centimeters in height. And although you will not soon want to cram two large dogs in this luggage compartment – in that respect, petrol-sluggers such as the Audi RS 6 and Mercedes-AMG E 63 remain unbeaten for the time being – you can still nicely store about 1,200 liters of stuff if necessary. take.

Differences Taycan and Taycan Cross Turismo

Leaving aside the body shape: how different is the Cross Turismo from the four-door Taycan? Is it just some plastic edges or is there more to it? Well, that last one. To start with, the base model: with the Taycan that is a rear-wheel drive, with the Cross Turismo a four-wheel drive (and therefore two-engine) Taycan 4, a version that is not even available as a sedan. It costs 97,400 euros (96,870 euros in Belgium) and does 0 to 100 in 5.1 seconds. Cross Turismos always come with the Performance battery Plus, where you can also get a sedan with a smaller battery.

The top speed of this Turbo S is 10 km/h lower. All Cross Turismo’s have standard air suspension that you can set 30 millimeters higher via the Gravel mode than with the regular Taycan. Don’t worry: in Sport Plus it just sinks to the ground. Smartlift is also standard, which inflates the suspension via GPS where necessary. Instead of the Sport Chrono clock on the dashboard, you can order a compass. And with the Off-Road Design Package (1,735 euros) you get cool wings at the wheel arches. But the best thing: there is a slim roof box that is approved for up to 200 km/h. Oh, you want that anyway.

Predictive Gifts

The way in which Porsche’s first battery car assists you in shaping your new electric-driving lifestyle continues to be great. Enter a navigation destination and the system will announce the percentage of battery charge that you will have left when you arrive there. There’s a Range mode that puts unnecessary power consumers on the back burner and limits the maximum speed to give you some extra miles. And the Taycan’s prophetic gifts are art. This press car claimed that we would go 365 kilometers on a fully charged battery of 93.4 kWh. In the end, even with a lot of highway and a few enthusiastic actions in between, this statement turned out to deviate only a few kilometers from reality with 10 percent battery remaining. So reliable, and that’s how it should be.

Because as you will know, not everyone is ready to make the switch to electric yet. This while manufacturers are being pushed and pulled from all sides towards a future without combustion engines. So if you get people to try your EV, you’d better assist them in the habituation process as best you can.

New benchmark

Still, we think there will be few who won’t be blown away by the Taycan Turbo S Cross Turismo. Back to our first statement: it’s that word game changer so bludgeoned to death, but otherwise we’d be using it here. Performance like this isn’t new in itself, but performance like this in such a complete, refined and do-it-all package is nothing short of a new benchmark. And it seems to us that with this kind of looks, technique and handling you can win a lot of hearts, even if they are actually gasping for gas. We are curious whether the Porsche Taycan Turbo S Cross Turismo can also apply this persuasiveness in practice. After all, for two euros there are probably countless other, louder dreams that you would like to fulfill – while you still can and may.