A few months ago, Porsche was spied testing a
mysterious Panamera prototype. Believed to have been internally named the Lion,
it allegedly had more than 800 HP from an updated variant of the plug-in hybrid
powertrain found in the Turbo S E-Hybrid.
Now, that same powertrain is thought to have made
its way into the Cayenne Coupe. Carscoops spy photographers
snapped a prototype of the BMW X6, Audi Q8 and Mercedes-Benz GLE Coupe rival,
in the Turbo S E-Hybrid guise, featuring a few updates that could signal the
arrival of an even more powerful version.
Blink and you might miss the changes, but take a
second look at the lower part of the rear end and you will see them. The Turbo
S E-Hybrid model has a quad-pipe exhaust system with round finishers, yet this
prototype has ghastly fake pipes that flank the real central-mounted ones.
Furthermore, the rear diffuser and part of the bumper are wrapped in a thin
layer of camouflage in another attempt to mask the updates.
The ’hybrid’ badges on the front fenders, rear
charging port on the driver’s side and shape of the front and rear bumpers are
the things that suggest that this is indeed a Cayenne Coupe Turbo S E-Hybrid.
Porsche’s coupe SUV range-topping variant combines a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8
with an electric motor and has a total system output of 670 HP and 900 Nm of torque in the standard model, yet the rumored
output of the more extreme version is 800+ hp.
