The thing that's so interesting about this forum, is the number of people that come here with a 'serious offroad' background. There's not a lot of rock crawling going on here folks. It's all (or almost all) on roads of some sort. They might be bad roads, with hundreds of miles of washboard or with foot deep ruts from commercial trucks passing through in the rainy season - but they're still roads.
Every post that I read that someone says, "You'd never get that up the Porcupine Corkscrew!" reminds me how few people actually understand the concept of 'overlanding'. I think it was Scott that said in one of his posts (to paraphrase) '... in reality, almost everything we do could be done with a Westfalia, and everywhere we go we find a clapped out Corolla has been there before us ...".
A Cayenne is a near perfect platform for overlanding. It had power to spare. It has an absolutely rigid superstructure. The lower control arms are high strength steel to withstand tons of abuse, while the uppers are lightweight aluminum to save weight. It has a great awd system. It has a phenomenal suspension that delivers fantastic on road performance coupled with fantastic 'off road' performance. If you've seen anything of the Trans Siberia, you've seen how fantastic they are.
What's the issue?
Nobody blinks an eye when you tell them you're taking your Rover to the ends of the earth, and nobody blinks an eye when you tell them that the damned Rover broke down on the way to the supermarket - again! But tell them that you're taking your Cayenne down a fire road and they all 'helpfully' tell you how it's going to break down in the middle of nowhere and 'what will you do then?'
The primary definition of 'expedition' states that it is a 'journey'. Getting up the Porcupine Corkscrew on a Saturday afternoon is not a 'journey'. The secondary definition of 'expedition' is 'promptness in acting - dispatch'. In a Cayenne, arguably, you can undertake a 'journey' with more 'dispatch' than you can with any other vehicle in the world.
Try to keep up. :victory:
I don’t think anyone has suggested that a Cayenne could make it up this “Porcupine Corkscrew” that you mention. I think most of the questions have been due in large part to the cost of entry for this type of vehicle. In this particular sub forum of Expedition Portal, $50k (about the cheapest I can find a Cayenne) is real money! Many of us have serious reservations about someone wanting to take a luxury vehicle out on the trails that we frequent. As I mentioned, the pin stripping I’ve received this year from forest roads and desert brush would probably amount to a whole new paint job on a Cayenne, and I can imagine that’s not cheap. Now if you have the money to pick up a vehicle for $50,000 and treat it like many of us do a $2,000 one, more power to you! I wish I had that kind of money just laying around, at that point I might consider a Cayenne too.
I also don’t think anyone has questioned the reliability of a Cayenne either. I’ve driven and worked on Porsches, I know the quality. But even the highest quality vehicle can have an incident. My main concern would be how to rectify that incident. No one bats an eye at a Rover because they’ve been there, done that. They have the pedigree for harsh, long distance travel. Porsche, despite their success in Dakar back in the 80’s and recently in the Trans-Siberian Rally, do not yet. And the vehicles in those events were race prepped, not off the dealer floor. Also, outside of the US, you can find Rover parts pretty regularly. Additionally on most Rovers you see out there on the trail, you can put them back together with spit and glue. I’d seriously question my ability to find Cayenne parts anywhere outside of the dealer and the level of technology in it would prohibit most trail repairs. Again, not questioning the general reliability, just what could happen when you ********** your oil pan on a rock at 50mph.
Journey: Noun: An act of traveling from one place to another. Verb: To travel somewhere.
So technically, heading up “Porcupine Corkscrew” on a Saturday is a journey, and to some, even an expedition. So while you’re questioning peoples understanding of ‘overlanding’, lets not belittle others idea of a journey, expedition or adventure. I don’t think anyone has questioned the ability of a Cayenne to be taken on an expedition, I think most question why when there are many other, arguably more logical choices. But as the OP suggests, he wants something different. A Cayenne would certainly be different; if you can afford it.
As for the Cayenne being the perfect platform for ‘overlanding’, you’re probably right. Most people I see ‘overlanding’ roll their Rovers out of the mansion garage once a year for a guided tour, pull out their titanium mess kits, leather handled “fire forks”, mahogany and brass campaign chairs, and $1,000 “expo” outfit and sit around the campfire while sipping cocktails.
The rest of us, yeah, we go camping.
