All-new Porsche Cayenne Turbo S now comes with 542bhp (w/VIDEO)

After lumbering on for over a year with ‘just’ 493bhp, Porsche has finally seen fit to add the letter ‘S’ to the Cayenne Turbo’s name, bringing with it an extra 49bhp. That places it just 5bhp short of BMW’s X5 M, but it’s likely to be considerably more expensive.

The regular Cayenne Turbo retails at £87,726 compared to the X5 M’s £83,290 and in Germany the Cayenne Turbo S is priced at 151,702 euros, which is a little over 24% more than its sibling. On that basis, the new Cayenne Turbo S is likely to cost around £108,000, which strikes us as a little bit ‘bonkers’ for a car whose primary purpose is ‘utility’. (I say this having purchased a £84k Merc ML63 in the past)

If we cut through all the talk of torque-vectoring-active-chassis-with-intelligent-damping, we see that Porsche are fundamentally offering a supercar-baiting SUV that’s 0.2 seconds quicker than the Cayenne Turbo (zero to 62mph in 4.5 seconds) and reaches a top speed, some 3mph higher at 177mph.

Of course, there’s plenty of special equipment to distinguish the Turbo S from the regular car, such as the air inlet screens, headlight housings and mirror parts painted in high-gloss black. It’s also fitted with 21-inch 911 Turbo II wheels as standard, with their inside surfaces painted in high-gloss black and coloured Porsche badges in the centre.

The Turbo S is also fitted with every imaginable control system as standard, including air suspension and active PASM damping control, Porsche Dynamic Chassis Control (PDCC), Porsche Torque Vectoring Plus (PTV Plus) and the Sport Chrono package.

Its 4.8-litre turbocharged V8 engine produces 542bhp and 553lb-ft (750 Nm) of torque from 2,250 – 4,500rpm (50bhp and 50Nm up on the Turbo), which compares with the 4.4-litre X5 M’s 547bhp and 501lb-ft (680Nm) of torque. As well as being more torquey, the Cayenne Turbo S is also more fuel efficient that its rival from BMW – with an average combined consumption of 24.6 mpg and 270 g/km of CO2 emissions compared with 20.3 mpg and 325 g/km for the X5 M.

So in relative terms, the new Cayenne Turbo S is faster and more efficient than its main competitor.

Inside, Porsche’s designers have created a choice of bi-colour leather packages (exclusive to the Turbo S), available in black/carrera red or black/luxor beige colour combinations, with decorative stitching in the contrasting carrera red and luxor beige colours. A carbon interior package complements the leather features and further highlights the new model’s premium price.

If this sounds like your ideal car, then deliveries of the all-new Cayenne Turbo S begin in January 2013, priced in Germany at 151,702 euros or approximately £108,000 here in the UK.

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