The 2025 Porsche Cayenne GTS Is How Dads Go Fast

Historically, about 10 percent of Porsche Cayenne buyers go for the GTS. The model boasts a slightly younger customer—50 years old, versus 52 for the rest of the Cayenne lineup—and skews male by three to one. In other words, the GTS is preferred by dads who want to go fast. And with 493 horsepower and a 4.2-second zero-to-60 time, the new Cayenne GTS brings a little more speed to the party for 2025.

The GTS is nearly the highest trim level in the 2025 Cayenne lineup, topped only by the outrageous 591-hp Cayenne Turbo E-Hybrid and Turbo GT. The GTS uses Porsche’s twin-turbo 4.0-liter V-8, making 40 more horsepower than the previous-gen GTS, along with 487 pound-feet of torque, an improvement of 30 lb-ft. For 2025, the GTS gets the water-cooled all-wheel-drive transfer case from the ridiculous 650-hp coupe-only Turbo GT, along with unique tuning for the adaptive air dampers, a 10-millimeter-lower ride height, and optional active roll bars.

Porsche invited us to sample the new GTS on a three-hour drive through winding two-lane country roads north of the automaker’s US headquarters in Atlanta. Through the area’s rolling hills and up its mountain switchbacks, the freshly-tweaked SUV was utterly unflappable. The GTS gets an extra half-degree of negative camber up front thanks to a few Turbo GT chassis parts, and in the cabin, the GTS features a slightly smaller GT Sport steering wheel. You won’t learn terribly much about what’s going on underneath those 285/45R-21 front tires through the wheel, but the steering feels quick and precise, with a whiff of added steering effort over lower-trim Cayennes.

My test vehicle was a GTS Coupe with the full slate of Lightweight Sport Package options, including a “lightweight roof” (deleting the standard panorama roof), carbon fiber rear diffuser, carbon fiber interior trim, center-exit lightweight sport exhaust, and reduced sound deadening. Porsche says all the lightweight options combined can trim as much as 55 pounds off the GTS Coupe’s 5,027-pound curb weight. (The standard body style rings in at 4,956 pounds in GTS trim, but doesn’t offer any Lightweight Sports Packages.) Every GTS gets unique exterior finishing, with black badges, gloss black accents around the windows and fender flares, and bigger front air intakes.

Despite weighing more than two current-gen Miatas, the Cayenne GTS Coupe is almost unsettlingly fast on a curvy back road. In Sport Plus mode, the GTS with optional active roll bars corners absolutely 100-percent flat, with no perceptible body roll whatsoever. Porsche Active Stability Management, Porsche Torque Vectoring Plus, and Porsche Dynamic Chassis Control all work together to erase every bad cornering habit you’d expect from a heavy family SUV.

It takes a moment to trust in these systems because it feels like someone forgot to turn on inertia. I preferred to dial things back slightly to Sport mode, where PDCC allows a smidge of rollback into the equation, giving your inner ear a little more data to work with. No matter the drive mode, the suspension maintains excellent comfort and compliance, with no harshness over bumps or choppy pavement. It’s almost magic-carpet-like in its ability to soak up road imperfections while obliterating body motions.

The Cayenne’s V-8 gets new single-scroll turbochargers and makes peak torque from 2,000 to 4,500 rpm. Porsche’s V-8 sounds great from outside the SUV, especially with the multi-mode exhaust in its sportiest setting. From the driver’s seat, the stereo-enhanced note can sound a little artificial and video-game-y at highway cruising speeds—even in the GTS Coupe with reduced sound deadening, I heard more engine noise from the speakers than from the exhaust system. Save the open-pipe antics for moments when you can run through the gears and enjoy the crackle and burble of the center-exit exhaust.

The eight-speed Tiptronic S transmission does a fine job when left to shift on its own, never fumbling for the right ratio, and it reacts near-instantly to manual shift requests from the large, column-mounted paddles. But take note: Even with the transmission toggled to manual, the Cayenne GTS will ignore your wishes and shift itself down to the lowest possible gear if you floor the accelerator at low RPM in a higher gear. A Porsche representative justified this as a safety feature, explaining that the car views a floored throttle as a request for maximum acceleration, possibly to get out of a dangerous spot. At the other end of the tach, though, the GTS becomes steadfastly obedient to the Manual setting, beating itself against the rev limiter rather than upshifting for itself.

That inconsistent shifting behavior is a tipoff: No matter what Porsche says, the Cayenne GTS is a sporty family vehicle, not an attack device for track days. It’s a competent five-person stuff-hauler that can gobble up switchbacks on the long way home from the office or daycare. The artificially enhanced engine noise and supercomputer-powered suspension can make any parent feel like a sports-car superstar, without having to wedge a kiddie seat in the back of a 911.

The 2025 Porsche Cayenne GTS starts at $126,895 (with the $1,995 destination included), while the Cayenne GTS Coupe kicks off at $131,495. Ordering begins this month, with the first US deliveries slated for later this fall.