Porsche Macan 2017Change

The styling’s slicker, it’s scary-quick, and it’s brutally expensive, although you expected that, of course. There’s a reason you don’t see these on every street corner. The Panamera lineup starts at $97,300, but my Panamera Turbo tester was stickered at $167,700, before a long line of options that lifted it to $185,880 before freight and taxes. That’s both the norm for Porsche, which lets owners equip vehicles as they prefer, and at the same time, head-scratching: even at that price, my car didn’t have adaptive cruise control, which is an add-on but can be found as standard equipment on vehicles a quarter of the price.

What it did have is an all-new 4.0L turbocharged V8, knocking back 550 horses along with 567 lb-ft of torque that peaks at just 1,960 rpm. Porsche says it’ll hit zero to 96 km/h in 3.6 seconds, and get that down to 3.4 seconds if the car’s equipped with a Sport Chrono package as mine was.