Porsche Macan 2015-2017Change

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.

This is my 5th Porsche and this one being a "cross-over" utility vehicle. It is an exceptional design both in form and function and full fills my daily diriving needs on the highway and around the city. And in true Porsche style, it has an awesome exhaust "note" and pulls respectable track times typically more worthy of it's more hard core race bred cousins. It's as close as you are going to get to the perfect sports car daily driver that can accommodate four adults and dogs, groceries and wine in the back.