1 Year With My 958 Diesel Porsche Cayenne

I kind of talked about it in My Cars and Bids Review, but in May 2023 I took a big leap and bought a Porsche at auction on Cars and Bids. In my review I talk about how it was kind of a rocky start, but everything worked out and ever since then I've been incredibly happy with the purchase. Having Doug DeMuro write an excerpt about my car was honestly worth the sticker price in itself.

Everyone I know expected this car to bankrupt me. Now the costs have hurt, but only because I lived without a car for over a year before purchasing the Cayenne. You forget how much car insurance and gas really adds up, but obviously everyone thought that it would be the maintenance costs that were going to ruin me. Like any performance vehicle they have to stay well fed to keep operating, but surprisingly the Porsche tax hasn't been that bad. Apart from good mechanics charging over $250 an hour, the steep price for parts is usually reasonable considering the lifetime and performance of the part. Repairs are pretty straightforward too considering it’s model year. My previous car was a 1998 BMW Z3 which was much worse to work on and maintain.

Obviously a bit of an apples to oranges comparison, and BMW isn't known for being cheap to maintain either, but I think Porsche engineering really is a step ahead. The few maintenance items I've done myself have been super straightforward. There are never hidden clips, or bolts that are impossible to unscrew, and every time I look up a maintenance guide I think to myself that I could have easily figured that out on my own. I am sitting at 157k miles and I bought the car at 145k so there could be plenty of demons biding their time but so far there hasn't been any major maintenance items. I even had a very reputable mechanic give it a full inspection and everything came back perfect.

Adventures

I'm a remote (finger quotes) worker that lives in a walkable downtown so unlike most American vehicles, almost none of my miles are from commuting. I go into my office occasionally and make consistent Costco trips but otherwise all of my driving has been either offroading or road trips.

Home for me is currently Colorado, and the car was in Massachusetts when I purchased it so the first time behind the wheel of the Cayenne was a 33 hour road trip. The Diesel is absolutely insane for road trips. I generally get over 30 miles to the gallon and I pretty much always push the limits of legal (finger quotes) highway speeds. Not bad for a massive SUV. This is the first car where the gas fuel tank outlasts my bladder on a road trip. The other amenities you get from a fully optioned out Porsche help the experience too. The other road trips have been between Denver and Phoenix, I can't recommend going through the Rockies and then Moab enough.

As far as offroading there isn't too much to say, I haven't done anything that extreme since I haven't managed to save a big enough pile of money to get the Berg Peaks build I want yet. The car handles incredibly on icy snowy conditions and mud. My friend got his RAM 1500 stuck up a trail in the Rockies this winter and I led a group of built out rescue Jeeps up to where his truck was and one of the Jeeps got stuck on the way up the trail while my Cayenne wasn't even breaking a sweat. That felt very satisfying because I could tell they were worried about me getting stuck up on the trail.

I also hauled a U-Haul trailer but there's no surprise that the Diesel didn't even notice that it was pulling a fully loaded 6x12 trailer.

Quality of Life Purchases

I won't provide direct links since I don't want search engines to think I'm just churning out affiliate link garbage but:

• VIOFO Dash Cam - Required with these Denver drivers
• Road Top Wireless Carplay Touchscreen - I tried using the build in PCM overrides but it was a total pain to install and didn't work well so I returned it. Phone mount would also work just as well.
• Trunk Cargo Net - Gotta stop items from sliding around in the boot

Undocumented Behavior

2014 is a quirky year for the Cayenne because it shipped with many cool features that were limited by software for various reasons: Bluetooth that doesn’t auto-connect, brake hold that only activates on hills, and parking sensors without auto cruise control. These little oddities add to the charm of owning a car from this transitional period in automotive tech.

I've discovered some neat undocumented tricks. The rear hatch open button on the driver-side door will close the door as long as you hold the button down. This is cool because the only documented way is to push the button on the bottom of the door or manually pull it down. Another cool thing is pressing and holding the lock button on the key fob causes the mirrors to fold in, which is handy for street parking.