Can the Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT dethrone BMW X5 M Competition?

The saying goes: “Straight roads are for fast cars, turns are for fast drivers”. We wonder if this will prove true when the Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT comes up against BMW’s X5 M Competition in a straight-line drag race?

You see, Porsche have just dethroned Audi’s RS Q8 as the fastest SUV to ever lap the 20.8 km Nordschleife of the infamous Nürburgring. Using a roll caged, and race seat kitted, camouflaged production model of their recently launched Cayenne Turbo GT, it came in 3.328 seconds ahead of their sibling with a time of seven minutes 38.925 seconds.

So now we know that the Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT turns and therefore must have been piloted by a fast driver, and it was. Test driver Lars Kern was the man behind the wheel of the 471kW/850Nm SUV and trust me when I say very few men on earth can out drive him around “The Ring”.

The powertrain and chassis of the Cayenne Turbo GT have been specifically tuned for this high-performance SUV, and this is a massive contributor to the vehicle’s ability to go around corners fast but having him behind the wheel alone must be worth a few seconds.

Where his talent is not going to make any real difference, is when it comes to launching and running the Cayenne Turbo GT in a straight line.

This 4.0-litre bi-turbo V8 is said to get to 100 km/h in a mere 3.3 seconds, while topping out at 300 km/h. The 441kW/800Nm RS Q8 comes in at 3.8 seconds, and the 478kW/850Nm Lamborghini Urus is fraction quicker at 3.6 seconds, while both are claimed to go five km/h quicker on top, and only stop at 305 km/h.

I am not sure how quick you need to get your kids to school in the morning, or how late you are running for tee off time at the Country Club, but any of the trio seem to have your high-performance SUV needs covered.

Out of left field enters BMW’s 4.4-litre 460kW/700Nm X5 M Competition that we mentioned right in the beginning of this story. The X5 M Competition has not set an official lap time around the Nürburgring, and although it will be way more than the average driver could ever handle, the X5 M Competition will not be as fast as the Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT in this track-based handling test.

But we are now talking about straight-line speed, and here we have an extensive database of high-performance, real world, in South Africa, numbers we have accrued over the years. On paper, the Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT also has everything on its side when it comes to a straight-line battle with any other SUV.

Talk is cheap, putting down the claimed numbers onto tar is a completely different story, and our fastest, tested SUV in the 0-100 km/h sprint test is BMW’s X5 M Competition with a time of 3.82 seconds. Now you might think its game over before the lights turn green, but we have seen a claim or two of being “The World’s Fastest SUV” fall flat when it comes to our real-world testing.

We test at power sapping altitude, with our cars running on normal, but high performance unfriendly 95 octane fuel that you and I get at any service station, and the test cars are normally full housed spec with all the extras, and biggest wheels available fitted.

Anything can happen on the day, with the big question remaining. Can BMW’s outgunned X5 M Competition somehow remain top of our Sprint Chart? Time will tell if the Porsche rewrites our record books once again!