Porsche Macan S 2019 UK first drive

It certainly demonstrates the importance of filling out your order form correctly if you mean to buy a car with the sort of enthusiastic handling and performance character for which the Porsche Macan is famed.

Here’s an example. There are three ways in which you can optionally tweak the exhaust system on your Macan S: with silver tailpipe finishers, with black ones, or with Porsche’s fully switchable sports exhaust system (which only comes with silver pipes, for the record). Our test car had the black pipe tips in order to match its wider styling theme – but that meant it lacked a bit of woofling, sonorous pizzazz. The car’s new V6 is certainly smooth, torquey, responsive and refined – but it seemed just a little bit short on charm for a Porsche.

The performance level it endows is anything but shabby, though. The Macan S has the very broad power band so common amongst modern multicylinder turbo petrol motors, so it feels brisk in any of its lower intermediate gears, and from almost any speed. A few years ago, you wouldn’t have wondered for a second whether you needed a more powerful engine. Frankly, you simply don’t.

And yet today, if you’ve driven the very latest performance SUVs at least, you might just want a bit more pace – and certainly a helping of extra audible theatre. It wouldn’t be a rational or particularly grown-up demand, and you probably wouldn’t feel good about making it – but I can see plenty of Macan owners driving this car and electing to keep their deposits dry for a GTS or a Turbo. By current fast 4x4 standards for straight-line shove, the Macan S just isn’t quite cutting it.

On adaptively damped coil springs and a bigger optional rim, meanwhile, the car has a very convincing blend of ride sophistication, lateral grip and handling response, and it steers more sweetly than an Alfa Romeo Stelvio albeit without handling quite as incisively. Having driven a four-pot Macan on adaptive air suspension and this six-pot without it, though, there’s no question that I’d want air.

For most SUVs, the argument you might make to spend a few quid on optional air suspension, where offered, would be almost entirely about ride comfort and ground clearance. Not so here. The Macan’s handling is only at its class-leading, mass-defying, apex-splicing best when the car can suck its sprung mass down over its axles and vary its effective spring rates, as that air suspension system allows. With it, the car corners flatter and keener, and with better balance and more intuitive and precise steering, than any compact SUV I can think of. It’s nothing short of remarkable to drive quickly.

Honestly, I wouldn't warn you off it - even after all those minor reservations, which do a fine car a bit of a disservice. In any V6-engined form, the Porsche Macan's a very complete and accomplished driver's car; one big enough for a growing family but not so big, perhaps, that it makes you feel unreasonable in your priorities in life, or irresponsible about your preferences.

The better question would be “how should I buy one” – and I hope I’ve answered it. Tick the boxes for the sports exhaust and air springs and a Macan S could be all the performance 4x4 you ever wanted. I’d add PTV Plus torque vectoring, sports seats and a good-sized optional alloy too, just to be sure.

As far as its utility value and practicality goes, the Macan was always better thought of as the compact four-seater Porsche rather than as any conventional mid-sized SUV, and that continues to be the case. In other words, while this could be precisely the Porsche you want, I’d bet few would who’ve owned one would describe it as all the SUV they ever needed.

Some probably wouldn’t think of it as an SUV at all. But then a certain resistance to definition doesn’t seem to have harmed the Macan's sales fortunes much.

Porsche Macan S specification

Where Banbury, UK Price £48,750 On sale now Engine V6, 2995cc, turbocharged petrol Power 349bhp at 5400-6400rpm Torque 354lb ft at 1360-4800rpm Gearbox 7-spd twin-clutch automatic Kerb weight 1865kg Top speed 157mph 0-62mph 5.1sec Fuel economy WLTP figures tbc CO2 WLTP figures tbc Rivals Alfa Romeo Stelvio Speciale, BMW X4 M40i