Eye of the Tiger. The Macan

At CocoMats, we love Porsches. With several classics in the family, the iconic Stuttgart shield holds a special place in our hearts. When most people think of a Porsche, the first thing that comes to mind is a luxury sports car or grand tourer. So it may come as a surprise that the best-selling car from a company with so many legendary two-seaters and 2+2s isn’t even a coupe at all. In fact, the bread and butter of Porsche’s U.S. sales is the Macan, a four-door crossover built to compete with the Mercedes GLK and current GLC, the BMW X3, and the Audi Q5.

It’s not secret that crossover vehicles have replaced the minivan, larger truck-based SUVs, and even four-door sedans as the family cars of choice in America. A few months back, I even wrote about the prevalence of crossovers and SUVs at my son’s preschool. Clearly, crossovers are meant to be exactly what the name implies - a compromise between performance and practicality without looking specifically like they are meant to haul kids to soccer practice. There were quite a few people who laughed at the Porsche Cayenne back in the early 2000s, thinking that Porsche was watering down its prestige by introducing something so utterly un-Porsche. Was there even a market for a Porsche on steroids? Who was going to buy an SUV that couldn’t be taken off-road? The answers are, “Yes” and “Everyone.” Porsche didn’t simply build an expensive, fragile sports car with trunk space and ground clearance, they engineered a truly masterful machine that performed as well on dirt, mud, sand, and snow as it did on the tarmac. The Cayenne has been consistently been Porsche’s international bestseller for more than a decade and a half, and its plethora of engine options and configurations for the international market, as well as the many badge-engineered vehicles that are sold to law enforcement and corporate interests in Asia, Africa, South America, and the Middle East, have paved the way for more experimentation in the company marquee.

The only real surprise is that there were still detractors when Porsche introduced the Macan in 2014. Just like those who turned up their noses at the Panamera and insisted that the world was not interested in a 4-door Porsche sedan, the haters were wrong. In 2017, the Macan sold nearly twice as many vehicles as all other Porsches combined in the U.S. market and catapulted Porsche to an eighth consecutive year of record growth. And let’s be honest, at under $50,000, there is plenty for both camps of Porsche fans to be excited about (and who can resist a car whose name is Javanese for “tiger?”). When compared to any competitive SUV or crossover at the same price point, the Macan brings Porsche performance in spades. The Macan S with a 3.0L turbo hits 60mph in only 5.2 seconds, and the Macan Turbo with the optional 3.6L will do it 4.6. As if that weren’t enough, only Porsche and Tesla earned top marks in a customer satisfaction survey of vehicles owned for three years.

As I said in the beginning, we are big fans of Porsche at CocoMats, and I’m not necessarily suggesting that if you’re in the market for a new car you should run out right now and buy a Macan.

But I would

-Trey Fennell