Grab a quick Macan

YOU can always tell if a married man has a wandering eye, simply by checking if he has one earlobe significantly longer than the other.

Yet, clinging pathetically to the tendencies of bachelorhood can bring far more serious consequences than facial asymmetry: If you're a Lothario who somehow had the good fortune to find someone willing to marry you, try convincing your better half to let you buy a sportscar. You might as well try to talk the ocean out of lapping at the shore.

For that you can thank men who covet sportscars more for the status they convey than the speed they muster.

So what's a bona fide driving enthusiast to do? Porsche, helpfully, has a solution. The latest variant of the Macan, a compact Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV), seems to have it all: five seats, a boot that can hold 500 litres of stuff (or three times as much if you fold the rear seats), and even a powered tailgate. But it also goes like a tiger with firecrackers tied to its tail.

Under the bonnet of the new Macan Turbo with Performance Package is a twin-turbo engine with 440 horsepower (hp). That gives it 40hp more than a standard Macan Turbo, and makes it quite a bit more powerful than the basic version of Porsche's own sportscar icon, the 911, which gets by on "just" 370hp.

Fearsomely fast

This range-topping version of the Macan happens to be a bit on the portly side, tipping the scales at roughly 1.9 tonnes, but with that much power it's still fearsomely fast. The sprint to 100km/h takes just 4.4 seconds, and if you use the car's launch control system to get under way, the resulting take-off is what it must feel like when a speeding locomotive hits you square in your hindquarters.

And while the Macan Turbo with Performance Package's name is a bit unwieldy, the car's handling is anything but.

The tyres feel soft and sticky, and their rubber seems to seep into tarmac the way spilt wine blots into a silk sheet. The suspension, meanwhile, has springs that are both stiffer and 15mm lower than that of a regular Macan.

Result? The Macan feels as planted as an elephant but changes direction like an antelope. You can expect some gentle understeer if you're brave enough to tiptoe to the edge of the car's abilities, but otherwise the Macan is a brutally fast machine than can tickle the fancy of any sportscar driver.

The Performance Package also includes bigger brakes, and the Macan's feel like they would have stopped the Titanic dead. (If only they had, too, and spared us the triple disaster of its sinking, the James Cameron movie and the Celine Dion song.)

Surprisingly, the Performance Package is fairly subtle about its steroidal qualities, and brings little in the way of bodily enhancement unless you count a grey engine cover. If you want to dress your Macan up there's always Porsche's thick options catalogue, but the Performance Package does come with stuff that counts.

It includes a sports exhaust system (a S$9,782 item) that gives the car's voice a subtle rasp, as well as the Sport Chrono Package (S$4,456), a must-have feature that places a rather fetching clock on the dashboard and adds a "Sport Plus" driving mode to make the car more energetic.

The bundling in of those features helps to offset the S$30,800 it costs to upgrade from a Macan Turbo to the Performance Package, but the extra money really goes towards the more powerful engine, the lowered suspension and the bigger brakes, none of which are available as individual options.

The Performance Package brings the price of the Macan to S$415,688 in total, and that's without the Certificate Of Entitlement. There are faster cars for the money, of course, or more spacious and comfortable ones, but it's difficult to find an alternative that would combine this much entertainment behind the wheel with day-to-day practicality.

In any case, if you're spending nearly half a million on a single car, you've every right to expect it to do everything well. But if you still think the Porsche is expensive, try asking a divorce lawyer what the combined effects of a wandering eye and a sportscar would cost you.

1The writer has reviewed cars in Singapore for 22 years. He believes in V8 engines, rear wheel-drive, and world peace.

Porsche Macan Turbo with Performance Package

Engine 3,604cc, 24V, V6, twin-turbo Power 440hp at 6000rpm Torque 600Nm at 1500-4000rpm Gearbox 7-speed dual-clutch automatic Top Speed 272km/h 0-100km/h 4.4 seconds Fuel efficiency 9.7L/100km CO2 224g/km Price S$415,688 excluding Certificate Of Entitlement Agent Porsche Centre Singapore Available Now