Snaking around the bends once off the highway was even more eye-opening. True, I had my eyes wide open for traffic as the road was rather narrow, but because of the car, it was also part amazement – a big part. One of the highlights was the level of grip. This Macan wears sports car-like mixed rubber — 265/45s at the front and Carrera-like 295/40s at the rear — which lend it outstanding grip, and, of course, put down all that power and torque delightfully. There are four effective drive modes: standard, Sport, Sport Plus and Off Road.
In the standard mode – no red lights on the centre console – the car rides smoothly, with the air suspension keeping the Macan 230 mm off the ground, and shifts from the seven-speed PDK occur in the mid-range, around 4,000 revs. Switch to ‘Sport’ and the Macan drops 30 mm lower, and shifts occur much later, with the on-board computer holding the gears longer and brow-sweat inducingly closer to the red-line, accompanied by a symphony of German metal which was far better music to my ears than whatever that exquisite Bose sound system was belting out at the time. ‘Sport Plus’ tightens things up further and the Macan hunkers down a further 10 millimetres. Take the corner, a hairpin, hard, and the tyres squeal but stay in line. I’d imagine I was doing about 70, but the numerals in the digital display were three distinct digits.
After a few more tyre-screeching hairpins, a pick-up carrying a payload of human cargo, typical scene from the city outskirts, was just ahead of me. No sooner did I appear around the hairpin in his mirrors than he frantically waved me by, almost going off the road-shoulder to let me through and rid himself of the tyre-squealing which had engulfed all their senses. Happily, I prodded the throttle further and those two turbos obliged with a whistle, and a wide smile, I’d imagine.
Just last month, I had the pleasure of driving the Porsche 911 Targa 4S. It had 200 more cee-cees but two less turbos, and still managed the same power, albeit at a screaming 7,400 RPM. This one, though, brought a perceptible wave of torque, although, honestly, it was not very apparent with that glorious exhaust note dominating the senses. However, this was a Macan, and I was still not convinced of all its abilities. I needed to see more.
