IT IS too easy to file Porsche into the car basket without getting a handle on why its products are so expensive and so revered.

There’s an awful lot of research and development in its models, a painful, pedantic, time-consuming and labour-intensive drudge of assembling tiny and often insignificant pieces that result, much later, as a very significant vehicle.

The problem may be that in creating something extraordinary, Porsche chose with the Cayenne – and also with the Panamera – to mask it beneath a rather ordinary body style.

Sales have been clipped, down 17.2 per cent year to date in 2015 to about 100 units a month, as BMW’s X5 takes the $70,000-plus SUV segment crown and others like the Mercedes ML-Class and Range Rover Sport bite into the remainder.

Even Cayenne’s little sister, the Macan, is getting more attention. So is the Cayenne – the vehicle that surged Porsche into profit – still representative of the brand and a pertinent cog in the SUV market?

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