“Faster than a speeding bullet.”
Nah, that’s been done before. How about: “it corners as if it’s on rails?” That’s been written a million times, too. Maybe, “It pins you in the back of your seat with enough force to crush your organs?”
I’ve been thinking of ways to describe the 2022 Porsche Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo, and I’ve concluded there’s no trite cliché that’s worthy of this triumph of automotive engineering. After three days with this electric vehicle (EV), I’m left buzzing and continually thinking about ways to describe it. Even a week after returning the keys, I’m still finding little love notes I’ve jotted down.
“This is a boss car,” reads one. “The electric angels are singing with extra exuberance today,” says another. And finally, “Is this what love feels like?” OK, that last one is made up, but for the sake of this review, this car is electric, both literally and figuratively.
As Porsche’s follow-up to its first EV, the Taycan Cross Turismo, wagonizes the brand’s popular four-door and adds some much-appreciated practicality. If “traditional car enthusiasts” or “wealthy-but-practical people” weren’t already on board with EVs, two surefire ways to suck them in would be to build a wagon and slap a Porsche badge on it. The next would be to make it fast enough to make Superman recoil and then, bingo! Now it’s an object of desire and a status symbol that has uses beyond just being expensive and pretty.
Like a Rolex that also happens to tell time, the 2022 Porsche Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo is a car that also happens to be a mode of transportation that says a lot about its driver. “I’m successful, I’m a person of fine taste, I’m practical, I care about sustainability, and I like to go real fast. Really, really, really fast.”
A Need for (Excessive) Speed
And that’s really where I can end this review, because this Taycan Turbo is quite possibly the most absurdly quick car I’ve ever driven. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a vehicle that is this quick and unrelenting in its delivery of speed. Foot to the floor, it feels like you’re traversing time and space, blurring the barriers of physics.
In traditional supercars, it feels like a jet taking off when you punch, and you can almost feel it clawing itself forward. You’re assaulted by noise and vibration, and it helps ground you to the sensation of speed; your body knows what to expect and you’re prepared.
The Taycan Turbo, meanwhile, slingshots forward in the most effortless way, almost like it’s a shot put ball being hurled by some enormous, invisible divine being who I imagine looks a bit like Jason Momoa wearing a Tom Ford suit. There’s no real sound when it’s being pushed and the stability the Taycan Turbo provides is otherworldly, so there’s little to connect your body to the regular sensation of speed.
On a full-throttle run, your stomach drops and it feels like a thrill ride where for a brief moment you’re suspended in the air, defying gravity. You have a flicker of fear and a moment of reckoning that you’re at the mercy of an incredible machine that’s only purpose is to thrill and scare you. And then you get back to the ground feeling dizzy and nauseous and the fun’s over.
The Taycan Turbo has all the fun parts and none of the downsides. But it is sickening, in the most fabulous way possible (a reclaimed turn of phrase that refers to something or someone that is flawless, fabulous, extremely pleasing, frightening, over the top, and fierce). And the more you drive it, the more sickening it becomes. It seems impossible that something this heavy and long can feel so agile. With the rear-biased all-wheel drive system, Porsche’s excellent electronically controlled suspension, divine steering setup, and the optional rear axle steering, the Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo is a force on both twisty roads and navigating through tight city confines, moving and changing direction like a much smaller car and balancing luxury and sport in a way that Porsche aficionados expect.
A Sophisticated, Smooth Powertrain
Mechanically, not much differentiates the Cross Turismo from its Taycan sedan sibling. In Turbo guise, it offers up a dual-motor setup and a 93.4-kWh battery that combine to enable a wild 616 hp and 625 lb-ft of instantaneous torque (or 670 hp with launch control). With launch control, the Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo can fly from zero to 100 km/h in a claimed 3.3 seconds – something my stomach, which now resides near my feet, can attest to.
This EV has a max charging capacity of 270 kW, which with a fast Level 3 charger can fill up the batteries from five per cent to 80 per cent in just more than 22 minutes. On a full charge – and on a warm summer day – the Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo was showing 368 km of range, and my consumption showed that estimate to be on the conservative side, even with the air conditioning running and after multiple full-throttle bursts. While I personally would still want 400+ km of range in an EV because I don’t have a place to charge at home, my guess is that if you’re considering this car, you’ll have a convenient place to plug in at your lair and the 368 km will be more than enough.
Style for Days With a Side of Practicality
Stylistically, the Taycan sedan and Cross Turismo wagon look identical except for the business in the back, which opens up 405 L of space in the trunk and 1,171 L with the rear seats folded flat – both huge improvements over the sedan’s 366 L trunk. The seats fold down manually and they don’t feel as heavy as the seats in other Porches to put back into place. The Cross Turismo’s on-board charger can easily slide into the 84-L front trunk with room to spare, leaving more room in the back to hold larger cargo.
The Cross Turismo measures 4,974 mm (195.8 in) long, which is a surprisingly tiny 11-mm increase over the Taycan sedan. While the cargo space is a bit more generous, the increased length isn’t an antidote to the tight confines you might already be familiar with in the Taycan sedan. Especially with taller people in the front, legroom isn’t expansive, though the huge glass roof helps the cabin feel airier. The Cross Turismo is also 31 mm (12. in) taller than the sedan, and that benefit can be felt in the rear headroom department, though it’s still not ultra accommodating for taller folks.
Inside, the vibe is typical Taycan – obsessive build quality, luxe materials, and a quartet of screens that should feel familiar to any Porsche driver. The digital gauge cluster is customizable; the bottom screen on the centre stack houses the touch-sensitive climate controls and shortcuts with haptic feedback to bring up menus for various other functions on the upper screen, which is used mainly for navigation, media, and settings; while the final screen in front of the passenger opens up most of those controls to them. A portion of the lower screen can also be used like a touchpad controller for the top screen.
One of my favourite interior features is the rose gold trim. I’m over brushed aluminum and piano black, so the rose gold trim is a little detail that really amps up the cabin and makes it look even more special and luxurious.
Sticker Shock
Like all Porsches, everything is optional, so you will be charged for features that should be included as standard for the Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo’s $178,000 starting price (plus $1,500 in destination fees) like a wireless phone charger, head-up display, surround-view parking camera, rear-axle steering, on-board charging cable, adaptive cruise control, power charge port cover, and even the spaceship electric car sound that the Taycan makes under acceleration and deceleration. The options are endless, and my tester rang in at $230,470 before tax. The downside is that the cost gets bloated quickly, but the upside is that having a bespoke car no one else has is a real boss move.
Final Thoughts
A friend who drives a Tesla and is an EV fanatic told me that the 2022 Porsche Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo is the perfect dream car because it ticks so many boxes. It’s practical, thrilling, efficient, prestigious, and luxurious, it has a ton of tech, and she was absolutely giddy just being in its presence.
The fun part about this electric car is that you don’t have to be an EV fan to get excited about it. It’s the type of special yet approachable car that makes people do a little dance when they walk up to it in a parking lot – one that gets people hyped to drive it, and one that would land in my garage if I were fortunate enough to have the means. Like its high-tech powertrain, this car just exudes electricity, but the kind you can also feel in your soul.
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