Living stories – Porsche CH Newsroom

It’s been more than two decades since the Porsche Cayenne hit the road – only to quickly leave it behind. The brand’s first SUV was not immediately hailed as a savior everywhere. When the Cayenne went on sale, purists among Porsche fans complained that only two seats and an air-cooled boxer engine were allowed to wear the sacred logo on the hood. But international customers saw the difference and made the third series of Porsche a “big hit” of the strange people.

The Cayenne is now not only a natural part of the brand’s portfolio – the young car scene around the world is already celebrating the first generation of the model as a true model. Finally, the off-roader doesn’t just offer a cheap entry into the world of Porsche. It can also be easily converted to a restomod. And so TikTok and Instagram are currently full of creative variations of the Cayenne that are presented in the farthest corners of the world with knobby tires and special colors. From Iceland to Patagonia – the chance of meeting a Cayenne complete with roof tent even in the most remote corners of the world is currently good.

“We can do that too – and maybe even better,” thought the creative people at Porsche Schweiz AG a year ago. After all, the Cayenne is not only the best car for life between the boulevards in Zurich or Geneva and the Alpine sport at the weekend. Many talented craftsmen also work in the workshops of the Porsche Center, who previously assembled their restomods after work or on weekends. And whose wealth of ideas and expertise required formal professional competition. So Porsche Schweiz AG, based in Rotkreuz, quickly announced the “Legends Alive Competition” – ​​and invited the national Porsche business and service companies to realize their vision of the first generation of the creatively modified Porsche Cayenne.

Unlike previous restoration competitions, the focus was not on preserving authenticity. On the contrary: the more creatively and individually the workshops redesigned the Cayenne, the better. Only two important requirements had to be observed: The material budget for all parts of the conversion was a maximum of 25,000 francs. And the Swiss car inspection had to be passed. Nine teams accepted the challenge and started work.

An icon of the off-road community is the Porsche Cayenne S Transsyberia, which mastered, not to mention dominated, long-distance rallies across Russia and Mongolia between 2006 and 2008. And many participants intuitively relied on the rally’s aggressive features. public features such as knobby tires, a raised chassis and roof racks for adventure equipment. But there were also concepts that depended less on road mobility. An unusual SUV trim including 22-inch rims was one of the more unusual modifications, as were a gas stove and shelves that moved out and in with power on the side windows.

The design was publicly admired for the first time at the Porsche Festival at Mollis airport in July 2023. And who would have thought that the original Cayenne could be modified in so many ways? The various variations ranged from an elegant meeting set in dark gray – which would cut a beautiful figure in front of the Palace Hotel in St. Moritz – to a pink “Caribbean Cayenne” by Chris Labrooy with a matching flamingo surfboard. roof. Cool Cayennes were undoubtedly among the stars at the Porsche party in the Glarus canyon.

However, the team from the Porsche Classic Center Geneva won the official audience award: They had transformed the 2004 Cayenne Turbo into a modern Swiss hippie car with clever storage systems, a Porsche roof tent and a flower power fade – a tribute to Porsche by Janis Joplin. 356 and the psychedelic “hippie Porsche” 917 LH, which finished second in the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The big competition show finally took place in November at the Porsche factory in Leipzig, birthplace of the Cayenne. A factory was once built especially for him. Porsche appointed three journalists to the expert jury: Markus Rutishauser from the Automobile Club of Switzerland (ACS) magazine, Jörg Petersen from the specialist magazine. automatically displayed and JP Rathgen from Classic Driver, the global platform for automotive culture. Wolfgang Butschek, currently manager of marketing, sales and after-sales in the SUV series and faithful companion of the Cayenne since 2004, also served as a national juror for Porsche. The experts evaluated the Cayenne based on, among other things, technical aspects such as the quality of the conversion work and its level of complexity, but also the driving characteristics were checked on the Leipzig tarmac and on the off-road course.

The more innovatively redesigned the Cayennes, the better.

And the choice was certainly not easy: “Powder Prowler”, the black Cayenne winter sports from Basel, was admired for its ski racks and an extendable fondue bar. And the Bernese Cayenne GTS was surprised by its Transformer appearance. But in the end the jury chose “#Cayenne957 Adventure” as their favorite – the olive-colored adventure car that Reto Honger and Luca Keller had previously introduced at the Porsche Center in Winterthur. The 2008 Cayenne Turbo impressed the judges all around: with its combination of lifting equipment and lifting equipment directed off-road and shortened bumpers including an integrated winch, trunk extension and drawer system, power station and gearbox cooler as well as roof tent and cover. . Details such as the purple ruby-painted controls – matching the emergency spade on the spare wheel – made the Turbo from Winterthur a beautiful work of art.

“All the modified cars emphasize the growing popularity of the earlier generations of the Cayenne,” summarizes Michael Glinski, CEO of Porsche Schweiz AG.

“We found that the community also sees the Cayenne as an adventure car, for example as a partner on camping trips. This can be observed especially online. The competition also has a sustainability aspect: preserving classic cars extends their life cycle.

It will be interesting to see in which remote corner of the Swiss Alps you will meet living legends – sorry, drive!

Information

The text first appeared in the Journal of Christophorus, issue 410.

Author: Jan Baedeker

Photo: Sebastian Kubatz

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