That Time Porsche Created A Funky Cayenne Convertible SUV

Just over two decades ago, many would have scoffed at the idea of Porsche making an SUV. The German manufacturer had built its reputation on making sports cars, its most infamous invention being the legendary 911, so an SUV seemed a bit out of sorts.

Spotting the sales potential within the ever-emerging SUV market during the late 1990s, it decided to get a slice of the action. The Porsche Cayenne was subsequently born, though many gearheads may not know that the brand looked into making a convertible version of the machine alongside the standard model.

It ultimately never made it to production, which to some is a shame. While celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Cayenne in 2022, Porsche explained just why it decided to leave the convertible version as a pipe dream rather than reality.

Cayenne Convertible To Access Another Slice Of Market

When Porsche takes on a project, it doesn’t do it in half measures. When it decided an SUV model would be needed to keep its accounts firmly in the green well into the new millennium, nothing was off the table in terms of developing the bloodline. With the standard SUV bringing in excellent sales for Porsche from the moment it was released in 2002, the marque soon looked into other variants it could bring to market.

Porsche Cayenne Turbo First Gen Used Prices

Source (Classic.com)

The first was an extended version of the machine. Porsche found that it could fit an extra row of seating by extending the vehicle around eight inches, which would allow it to join the likes of the capable Toyota Land Cruiser and the Range Rover in offering seven seats. The German brand also looked into building a coupe version of the Cayenne. It shelved its plans to build the car with a sloped, lower roofline until it eventually released a version based on the third-generation model in 2019.

The closest extra variant of the vehicle to make it into production at the time was its third option. Keen to bring a luxury and performance angle to the convertible SUV market, much as the Cayenne did with the conventional SUV sector, Porsche heavily evaluated chopping the roof of the machine. Unlike its other two ideas, this thought didn’t just remain in the heads of its designers.

Porsche Had Several Concerns About Viability Of Convertible Cayenne

Porsche’s big wigs at the time were switched on by the idea of adding a drop-top version of the Cayenne alongside the SUV in its lineup. The company came up with four different problems that needed answers before the model could even be considered being put into production. The first regarded the seating, as the roof would need to slope downwards toward the rear of the vehicle.

Due to the coupe-like shape of the roof, headroom when the top was up could be reduced. An SUV that struggles to fit people in kind of misses the point, so Porsche needed to ensure its new baby wouldn’t condense its customer’s spines.

Its second issue also concerned practicality, with the Cayenne being turned into a two-door vehicle with the addition of a convertible roof. The doors would need to be eight inches longer, which could make things tricky day to day. Longer doors need more space to fully open, which would make trips to car parking lots very difficult due to the limited space.

Main Issues Flagged With Convertible Cayenne

• A new folding fabric roof had to be designed from scratch
• Larger doors needed for a coupe-style design would make access tricky in tight spots
• The large storage area needed for the roof made designing a pretty rear end a challenge
• Space within the interior is compromised by a sloping canvas top

Porsche also needed to solve the problem of designing an electrically folding roof that would work efficiently and reliably, while also looking elegant like the modern-day Range Rover Evoque convertible. The final thought on the designer’s minds was whether they could make the back end of the Cayenne convertible SUV pretty enough.

Prototype Cayenne Convertible Built To Try And Find Answers To Riddles

To try and make some headway with its idea, Porsche greenlit a Package Function Model (PFM) of the car to be built. A PFM is essentially a non-functional prototype that is built simply as an engineer’s plaything to work out whether an idea is viable or not. The roof was chopped off a standard Cayenne SUV, though no strengthening was added to the body to make up for the lack of a fixed roof. The vehicle had to be transported everywhere due to how unsafe the vehicle was without the added rigidity.

A fabric drop-top solution was fully conceptualized but never built, though it would later be used for the 991-generation 911 Targa, of which Porsche built a special heritage edition in 2020. The rear luggage compartment would have been double-hinged, so it could open in both directions.

The roof would rise up and over the rear roll bar, before being swallowed into the luggage compartment in a Z formation. Two different rear ends were also designed as Porsche tried to make the variant attractive enough. One had the rear lights placed lower, with the other much higher.

Unfortunately, Porsche ultimately elected to forego any plans to bring the Cayenne convertible to market in the end. This came after it concluded the profitability of the machine would be limited, especially given the number of modifications that needed to be made to the standard Cayenne to make the drop-top a viable proposition.

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Speaking in 2022 as part of the Cayenne’s celebrations, Porsche’s Chief Designer Micheal Mauer, who wasn’t part of the Cayenne convertible project, reckoned the “strange shapes” that resulted from chopping the roof off a full-size SUV made it tough to design a handsome example of the breed. “An SUV always has a large and heavy body,” said Mauer. “You combine this with a small top half and then cut off the roof – you get very strange shapes emerging from that.”

The Cayenne Saved Porsche’s Bacon

Despite the convertible Cayenne never reaching production, the standard SUV version of the model proved to be enough of a success for Porsche to never revisit the idea in the years since. Despite offering the well-received 996 911 and affordable 986 Boxster models in the late 1990s, Porsche’s finances weren’t exactly in the best place.

2008 Porsche Cayenne S Specs

Source (Porsche)

Working alongside Volkswagen, with which it enjoyed a close partnership but wasn’t yet part of the same group, the two companies began work on designing the underpinnings for a new SUV. Dubbed the ‘Colorado’ project, VW came up with the Touareg while Porsche birthed the distinctive Cayenne. Offering a pair of 4.5-liter V8s as the engine options for the Cayenne and Cayenne S models respectively, Porsche wanted to combine the space and luxuriousness of an SUV with the driving dynamics it was famed for.

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The machine proved to capture the world’s imagination much stronger than Porsche had dreamed of. Initially hoping to shift around 25,000 examples a year, the manufacturer ended up shifting 276,652 first-generation Cayennes by the time it was replaced in 2010. This translates into a staggering 35,000 per year, which skyrocketed the company’s profits.

The ever-popular Cayenne remains in production today, with the brand currently developing an all-electric version of the machine. Set to be released in 2026, Porsche hopes the new model will continue to bring success long into the future.

Sources: Porsche Newsroom, Classic.com