Porsche Cayenne Diesel – it’s official

We all wondered how long it would take for Porsche to bite the bullet and give in to the diesel bandwagon. Well, it’s happened. Porsche has officially announced today that the Porsche Cayenne diesel will go on sale in Europe in February 2009. And, surprise surprise, they’re dropping the 3.0 diesel from the Q7 in!

2009 Cayenne Diesel

Although Porsche has made the announcement today, the diesel version of the Cayenne is a little less boastful about it. In fact, you’d have to lift the bonnet to have a look or hear it running to know it’s a diesel. There’s not a single giveaway on the body. No badge. No little TDI anywhere. To all intents and purposes it’s a standard V6 Cayenne.

The 3.0 diesel out of the Q7 puts out a very creditable 240bhp, so it’s no sluggard. In fact, it’s arguably a better engine than the petrol V6 Porsche already use in the base Cayenne. We’ve got a V8 Cayenne, but when we were buying that we did try out the V6. It wasn’t nice. Yet the 3.0 diesel Q7 is actually a pretty good drive. No V8 for sure, but perfectly liveable.

So, to clarify, Porsche’s press release said:

The new Cayenne with diesel drive will be available from dealers from February 2009 onwards. Equipped with the proven Tiptronic-S automatic gearbox as standard, the Euro base price will be EUR 47,250. In Germany, the Cayenne with diesel engine including 19 percent VAT and country-specific equipment costs EUR 56,436.

The Diesel Engine of the Cayenne

Now whether or not that gets any cheaper when it gets to the UK to take account of the currently miserable exchange rate, who knows. But by the time it gets to the UK in February we could well see the price in Deutschmarks instead of Euros, such is the precarious long term future of the Euro!