Bought a new Daily Driver

So I wanted something with a hatch, preferably manual transmission, AWD and it'd be nice if it could tow. After going to my tried and true Audi well and coming up dry, I decided to step out of my usual desires and started looking for a '04-'06 Porsche Cayenne Turbo.

These have depreciated MASSIVELY. To the point where you can easily find them in the $15-20k range and sometimes closer to $10k. A Turbo was pushing $90k new, the Turbo S close to $120k. They're fairly reliable with a few known trouble spots (coolant pipes, cardan shaft and coil packs), so I made sure to find one with documented service history showing that stuff done.

Like all other Porsches these are very "ala carte" vehicles, it can be hard to find one with the options you want and missing the ones you don't want. I wanted a black leather interior, leather steering wheel (not wood/carbon as it's not heated then), tow package and no panoramic sunroof. I preferred the dark grey exterior with black trim.

After a few fits and starts, one popped up locally on AutoTrader on Friday at a Mazda dealer. It was basically everything I wanted, just didn't have the ski sack, which I can live without. I gave them a call and checked it out yesterday.

Two owner truck, last owner has had it 85k miles, very clean, tinted windows, clear bra, etc, etc. Drove very well, has more power than I'd ever imagine an SUV having. This one is a Turbo S, so that means bigger intercoolers, bigger brakes and more boost, to the tune of 520hp.

Dealer was asking a fair price, I got them to come down a bit and agree to deliver it to me as I live 1 hour away from them and I'd rather not drag my wife on a 2+ hour journey if I don't have too.

Really looking forward to playing with this!

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These are on my list as being a fun do it all truck. Congrats. So, this was a manual truck? It's hard to find a manual truck at all, much less one optioned at all close to what you want. Good job.

What's "routine" maintenance on something like that???

Nope, none of the turbo's are available in a manual transmission. So I had to give up on that one. It does give me another car that my wife can drive, which is good and bad.

You can get the base model and the GTS in a 6mt. I drove the GTS with the 6MT and was underwhelmed. I live up at altitude, so the GTS just didn't have the power I wanted. It also wasn't a great manual, long throws, late let up on the clutch. It just didn't seem to match up with the personality of the truck very well.

Routine maintenance isn't bad. Oil changes, periodic air filter/cabin air filter changes and diff/tranny fluid changes.

Congrats on your purchase. Hard to imagine that such a beast is available for such a reasonable price these days...

damn....i didn't realize that the non-turbo V8 models had so much power too. I was chuckling at a guy at our last race who was towing a big enclosed trailer with a non-turbo V8 S.....now I feel dumb since he has more power than my tow rig, lol.

And yeah, prices are pretty crazy low, even in this area.!

In reply to irish44j:

Rednecks with a recovery strap.

The quality of discourse has now been lowered. You're welcome.

Man, prices are all over the place. It's giving me fits too. LOL.

You don't say? You don't say?

I love it! Very nice.

Great choice!

Ugh. Another thing i didn't know i wanted and could 'more or less' afford.

There was a thread over on advrider.com a while back where someone tried towing his toy hauler with one of these and learned that it actually did better than his diesel mega-truck.

5600 lbs? That sucker is dense!

Yeah, not a light weight at all! My friend has towed extensively with his Cayenne Turbo and loves it. Says its extremely stable.

It's ridiculously fast. Almost feels like it could give my 500hp LS swapped 951 a run for its money and that car weighs about half what the Cayenne does.

Two turbos in my area for <18k....

In reply to Vigo:

I saw those too

What's the catch other than high miles? Did they miss the leading 1? http://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/detail/641419966/overview/#1

I saw this thread and looked around on autotrader. These do seem to depreciate a ton and would be pretty sweet. The gas mileage is WAY BAD though. So premium up here in the land of taxes would be about $5k/year or more. I looked on Fuelly.com and the real world mileage is even worse with some reporting over 20l/100km or 11mpg. If you don't mind that then they seem pretty cool. Reliability can be spotty too.

Gas mileage isn't any worse than any other 5000lb+ SUV that makes this kinda HP. Definitely not the type of car if you need something economical.

Got a bunch of good and bad news. Good news first, I found the original window sticker in the owners manual book, sweet! I also got all the service records and discovered that pretty much all the common faults on this car have been addressed already. So coolant pipes, coolant T, cardan shaft, hatch struts, tpms sensors and a headlight bulb/ballast. That all made me very happy!

Bad news is I had the car at the Porsche dealer yesterday to get a new master key made and they found that the truck is leaking tranny fluid. They suspect the torque convertor seal, which is a cheap part, but two days work to R&R the tranny to get to it. I'm hoping they're wrong and am taking the truck to them next Tuesday...

In a glass half full perspective, they gave the rest of the truck two thumbs up. Brakes are in good shape, so are the axles, CV's, etc, etc, etc.

Updates?

Well, it was a $45 torque convertor seal that was bad. That's the good news. The bad news is that the transmission needs to be removed to replace it, to the tune of $1800 in labor. While they were in there they found that the two internal tranny harnesses that connect to the TCU were bad as well, apparently they have a seal that keeps the oil out and that had failed. They fail with enough regularity that the dealer keeps them in stock.

I also had the tranny oil/filter service done at the same time.

Not an inexpensive service at all, but at least it's done and won't fail on me again. All the other known Cayenne issues have already been addressed, so it should be good to go for a long time now.

I'm getting proper SUV gas mileage, but that isn't helped by the fact that this vehicle goads you into hooning it. Very comfy, handles FAR better than my old Audi Allroad, which is shocking considering they both have air suspension and the dynamics should favor the allroad since it's lower and weighs less. This has really been the biggest surprise, I can't impress enough on how it just doesn't handle like a truck. The more I lean on it in corners the more it just tucks in and goes around.

The truck has Jeremy Clarkson POWER!!!! It's just there anytime you want and you can easily blow the doors off pretty much anything short of a proper, high dollar sports car.

Based on the previous owner's repairs for 'known issues' and this current repair you've had done, what's the ballpark damage for everything? It's been awhile since I read about the Mercedes-Benz ABC suspension repairs and I'm having bad thoughts about a twin turbo truck.

Planning any Hp mods?

Porsche is paying for the coolant pipes, so that's free. The cardan shaft you can buy from Colorado Driveshafts for $350 and its an easy DIY. Hatch struts and cool packs are also easy diy's.

Figure spending $2000 if you need a torque converter deal done and pay to have the coolant T hose replaced when the coolant pipes are done. If the coolant T wasn't done when the coolant pipes were, that can be another $2500.

Fuel pumps are around $600.

Since mine is a Turbo S I have no plans to do a tune. I may add the Hanksville secondary cat bypass pipes, but that's it. It already makes 520 hp...

Time for another update. I found that the microswitch that pops the rear hatch glass isn't working. Part brand new was cheap, $25 from Sunset Porsche. However I happened to find one brand new for sale on Rennlist, guy just wanted to get rid of it and sent it to me for the price of shipping, $6! Score!

I also fixed the "dipped beam" warning by replacing the drivers side Xenon headlight bulb, $50 for an OE Phillips replacement from Amazon vs $300 from the dealer. Popping out the headlights is incredibly easy, use the tool in the supplied factory tool set and it's out in 30 seconds.

Next up I ordered a Denison Bluetooth module. This integrates with the fiber optic network in the car and allows the Denison to show all the phone info on the stereo screen, the steering wheel buttons work and it pulls in the contact list on your phone. It also allows you handsfree calling and streaming music.

I'm on the hunt for a pet net and cargo net as somewhere along the line they've disappeared. I'm also looking for winter wheels/tires...