Cars with Jan Coomans: Macan Highlands Experience

Sitting in the driving seat of a Macan gave me a rather familiar and homely feeling. One could argue that the nearly endless expanse of buttons and switches on the central tunnel is too busy and impractical, but now that the newer models have moved nearly everything to a touchscreen it was actually nice to go back to the slightly more old fashioned way of turning things on or off. The Macan is also one of very few SUVs which feels vaguely sporty to me. Sure it doesn’t have crazy amounts of power – it’s no Lamborghini Urus – but its more modest size and therefore weight do wonders for the driving experience. The comfy sports seats also offered an amazing level of lateral support, properly hugging the sides of your body.

After nearly a decade of living in Moscow, I’ve mostly adopted the local habit of assuming the worst when it comes to the quality of the road network in faraway corners of Russia. However, not for the first time, these misgivings proved unfounded. In fact, the roads were pretty darn awesome. The bit that runs between the airport and Kislovodsk wasn’t particularly interesting of course, but once we drove into the actual highlands it was pretty much motoring nirvana. Fast, flowing roads only occasionally interrupted by the odd tight bend or hairpin. No real potholes or nasty surprises, aside from a very small stretch of asphalt which seemed to have been laid halfway through the previous century and since then people have been arguing over whose responsibility it was to fix it. If there was one thing to worry about, it was the fact that the locals seemed to have a particularly liberal approach to keeping cattle.

Each time you rounded a blind turn, you were waiting for the answer to the question “will there be a cow in the middle of the road this time?” to hopefully be negative. Which wasn’t a given as, on the whole, I probably saw more cows than people on this trip. Sometimes with horses mixed in, or a bunch of sheep, most of them walking around the stunning grassy hillsides freely and seemingly without a care in the world. On the off chance that reincarnation is a thing and I end up as a large hoofed mammal next time around, I’d like to call dibs on being settled in this particular part of the world. Still, while in this life and in charge of piloting a fairly expensive Porsche, this abundance of semi-tame animals was something of a cause for concern when we were pressing on. Hence, I decided the best tactic was to make sure I left each stop right behind the leading Porsche Cayenne driven by a former rally driver. Say what you want about rally drivers, but they’re not shy about carrying a bit of speed around blind corners. And if there was going to be anything to hit, best that he encounter it first.

On occasion, this system led to such good progress that we had to pull over and wait 5 or 10 minutes for the cars behind to catch up. Hardly a punishment, as this was an opportunity to take in the beauty of the surroundings as well as to sample the crispness of the mountain air. Because we were very much in fall already, brown was the most prominent colour anywhere you looked but the topography of the place was very particular and unlike anywhere else I’ve been. I imagine when everything turns green in spring it’d be twice as stunning. As we kept driving uphill, we eventually got to a place where the GPS altitude on the car’s dashboard was showing about 2500 meters and there was actual snow on the ground. There, however, I didn’t stick around for too long because it was just bloody cold.

Switching from the Macan GTS to the Turbo, I seemed to detect slightly heavier steering but otherwise both cars drove about the same. There’s a bit more power at high RPMs in the Turbo, but as mentioned earlier you’d have a hard time noticing it. Stepping down to the Macan S makes more of a difference, as there you get an engine that is actually different. The “S” has the most displacement of the entire range, 3 litres, and the least amount of power and therefore the smallest turbocharger. This means it does build torque earlier in the RPM band, it feels stronger at part throttle in the 2500 to 3000 RPM range but it feels like it runs out of steam a bit after 5000 RPM compared to the higher placed models with the 2.9 litre engine. The 3.0 also comes with a slightly different soundtrack, but since both are turbocharged V6 engines you need a sensitive ear to pick it up.

Overnight rain provided an opportunity for our cars to play in the mud the next day when we had a little off-road section in order to reach a rather picturesque waterfall. With its all-wheel-drive and considerable ground clearance, a Macan is pretty good at going places where ordinary cars can’t. In this case though, we were somewhat handicapped by the fact that we were all on regular summer road tires. Not exactly what you want when trying to go uphill through huge mud-filled ruts in a soggy field. Nobody got stuck, but there was a fair bit of slippin’ and slidin’ going on and by the time we got to our destination a few hundred meters down the field our cars looked like a bunch of piglets who had only just discovered the existence of wet sand. A short but steep and rocky walk got us to a rather picturesque place with a waterfall, so the mud bath had not been entirely pointless.

Of course, living in a metropolis like Moscow where the vast majority of Porsche Macans are sold you won’t be facing the same challenges as we were on this trip. Even so, it’s hard not to be impressed by how well the Macan handles just about anything you can throw at it. To be sure, this is a car designed to drive on paved roads first and foremost. It’s not a sports car, but it does drive particularly sportily for an SUV – and I think it’s also a particularly good looking one. And for me, it was the Macan GTS which was the star of the show. It all but makes the Turbo unnecessary, as it carries much the same hardware and the experience is every bit as good. But it’s quite a big step up over the Macan S, and combined with the extra standard equipment on the GTS it turns out to be something of a bargain. I wouldn’t mind having one, in fact, and I can’t really think of another SUV where that is the case.