High Fidelity

PORSCHE ATTEMPTS TO TAME TARGA HIGH COUNTRY'S BLUE RIBAND ROUTE WITH THE ASTONISHING CAYENNE TURBO GT COUPE

- ANDY ENRIGHT

THE FIRST TIME I ever drove this road, there was no traffic coming the other way and it was fantastic. Apex right across the road, skim your right-hand guard up against the Armco and the car hunkers into the camber. Feel everything unweight as you launch across the crown of the road and then compress, tyres keying into bitumen, fictitious forces feeling very real. That was Targa High Country which is, for the time being at least, a thing of the past; an event stricken from the calendar courtesy of a run of horrors at its sister event across the Bass Strait.

Today we’re back on the road that comprises nearly 40 percent of Targa High Country’s stages the MansfieldWhitfield Road. Even leaving Targa aside, it’s a road that we love. MOTOR used to run the road stages of Performance Car of the Year on this stretch and there’s a private rally facility tucked away in the trees halfway along its length. The vehicle we’ve brought to sample it today at first seems more likely to steamroller its relief into submission, but the Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT Coupe is Zuffenhausen throwing all it knows at a pure internal combustion-engined super-SUV, so you suspect it may have a trick or two up its sleeve.