Porsche Cayenne S Diesel Getting Audi V8

Porsche has been on something of a diesel kick recently, with their V6 Cayenne and Panamera. Soon they’ll be expanding on their performance with a V8 Cayenne as well. In accordance with their normal naming schema, they’ll call it the Cayenne S Diesel. One might wonder why Porsche would bother with such a configuration. After all, the gasoline engines are much, much better at making horsepower than their diesel equivalents. But that’s short sighted. There’s one thing that a diesel V8 will dovery well: Torque.

The engine is a 4.2L V8 sourced from Audi. It doesn’t make that much power compared to a similarly sized gas engine (382 hp), but it more than makes up for that with it’s 626 lb-ft of torque. We’re used to seeing those numbers from the behemoth engines coming out of AMG. Porsche? Not so much. The kicker is that it’s not just torquey, but efficient. In fact, the Cayenne S Diesel will return 29mpg. That’s in addition to being able to go 745 miles on a single tank, and being able to tow 7700 pounds at will.

Like all things good and awesome, there’s no apparent intention for it to be brought over to the US. A similar engine is expected to show up in the Panamera sometimes soon as well. Since we can’t get performance based Diesel SUVs, then the chance of a diesel powered sport sedan seems equally as unlikely.

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