Digging up a desert doesn't get much better than this, says Justin Hynes, as he takes to the dunes in Dubai in a Porsche Cayenne. Could there be a better place to test an SUV?
The Porsche name has always had its share of cachet.
Sure it's come and gone over the years, boosted by the celebrity attentions of the likes of James Dean and Steve McQueen and notoriously blighted in the 1980s by a host of loudmouthed City of London boys for whom a 911 was the car of choice when looking for something to blow your bonus on.
But the pull of Porsche lives on, reawakened after years of blousy, plump 996s by the latest more macho, more reverential iteration of the 911 and given a new lease of life by the rather fetching Cayman.
Which is why it's no surprise that Ronan Keating is looking at me.
Now I could be wrong, and maybe it was the world's foremost Ronan look-alike but I'm pretty sure it was him. Ro, mate, Dubai airport, couple of weeks ago? I was the short ugly bloke standing beside the man with the Porsche sign, you were the bloke in cargo pants looking hassled? Had to be.
Anyway, the point of all this is that he clocked the Porsche sign and did a double take. Now Ronan, given his status as the pre-eminent post-boy band crooner of the post-Robbie Williams milieu has probably brought in enough cash to overlook such things. But he still looked.
Such is the draw of the name. It's iconic, legendary, Porsche is what neat, tidy, alarmingly quick and savagely unpredictable sports cars are all about.
However, the question on this day was: "is that iconic status being diluted by building a bloody SUV?"
Actually, that question, in relation to the Cayenne, was answered many moons ago, about the time that the humungously healthy sales figures started pouring in.
Were the purists upset? Yes. Did anyone care? Did they heck. Were Cayennes screaming out of forecourts in America just as fast as their chrome rims could carry them. Oh yes siree Bob.
But still, I'd never driven one of these things. I needed to prove it to myself. I've loved the 911 since time immemorial. But a Porsche SUV? To me it's a car born of the fevered dreams of Armani-suited marketing mavens, of demographics plotters.
And what better way to figure this out than to harness the awesome power of the big daddy of the Cayenne range - the new Turbo S, a 500-odd bhp behemoth introduced as the top dog at the recent Los Angeles Motor Show.
First though there was a bus ride, between Dubai's steel and glass towers, beside its monuments to conspicuous consumption. There's the Snowdome, there's the Burj hotel, the one like the big sail. There's a Burger King, a Kenny Rogers chicken shack. There's Gucci, Pucci, Dior and more. Swarovski, Tuomi, Samsonite and Bally. It's a bit like a monstrous airport duty-free lounge but with added beach.
But eventually the bright lights of downtown Dubai give way to the real stuff - sand, and lots of it. Ah yes, it was almost as if I could hear the exotic strings of Maurice Jarre's theme from Lawrence of Arabia swirling in my ears.
As if I could taste the dry desert air breathed by such legends as Lawrence, Sinbad, that guy from that other film and uhhh Indiana Jones?
The Desert Song had been awoken in me. Almost. It was three o'clock in the morning. The only song I craved at that stage was the musical note of my own snoring. Day two though introduced me to the Cayenne Turbo S. Firstly, though, a man from Porsche told us all about their new flagship. "It has 521 horsepower at 5500 rpm from its 4.5 litre V8." Low whistles of appreciation.
"It accelerates to 100 km/h in 5.2 seconds." Flipping Nora! "It's the most powerful Porsche in the range after the Carrera GT. It has a top speed of 270 km/h or 167 mph." If you don't give me the keys now I might have to fight you and I'm telling you, I'm stronger than I look.
But this trip wasn't about performance, it was about putting the Cayenne through its offroad paces. You know, busting a few moves in the dunes. So the wagon train rolled out, deep into the desert, off to the dunes of the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve a vast protected area of desert which was about to turn into a playground of the massively eco-unfriendly SUVs. It seemed almost appropriate. Once inside, the fun began and the Cayenne was pretty good, even if I wasn't.
All the way along the short drive to the reserve I'd been promising myself I wouldn't be the one who got his car mired, wouldn't be the one fruitlessly spinning his wheels in ever deepening ruts in the sand. And what happened?
It took five men nearly 10 minutes to lift the car out after I'd cleverly avoided the correct route across a dune and deposited the Cayenne in a sandpit the depth of the Marianas Trench. I grinned sheepishly from the sidelines as they huffed and puffed, inching forward and back and left and right in a bid to free my buried Cayenne. And they did. And I got in and engaged gear and got it stuck all over again.
Not that I was completely hopeless. The Cayenne has so much power that you can plough through the dunes with relative abandon, gunning yourself out of trouble just as the pace has slowed so much that you fear you might not be able to take off again.
A short blast on the accelerator and the Porsche kicks up a rooster-tail of sand and you're out and off. Mostly. It did get stuck, a lot. But what's the comparison. Does a Land Rover do likewise? Does a Land Cruiser? I'm sure they would.
Sand is the most unpredictable surface I've ever driven on. It moves in truly mysterious ways and there is a real technique to it.
You can get away with a lot on snow and ice, but sand is a trickier mistress. The local guides who took us into the reserve skittered around in their Cayennes like they were out for a stroll at Sandymount.
For mere mortals the desert was trickier and harder to gauge in terms of the Cayenne's performance. It lacks salient items like hill descent stabilisers but makes up to some degree with a mighty active suspension system which does a good job of reducing pitch and sway.
Beyond that it seemed to do what a 4X4 does, although in these extreme conditions the competence of the pilot is the true letdown in giving an accurate reading of the car's usefulness.
But then again, it is never, ever really going to be used in the desert is it? It will trundle along motorways and in that regard it performs well. It's quiet, comfortable, has more grunt than you can shake a stick at. You'll never feel at a loss for anything when swaddled in its opulent surrounds.
But while it's a solid car and ticks a lot of the right boxes: power, handling, comfort, it is still a strange beast. Other than in pure marketing terms, which, of course, are ultimately the only references that matter, it is, for me, a failed exercise. I just don't get it. A €200,000 SUV?
Driving back through the desert on the way to the city, two analogies strike me. We pass by a camel farm, a cluster of spindly-legged animals chewing aimlessly at the branches of a solitary tree. And the Cayenne is like them. It is a horse designed by a committee.
It is the brainchild of demographers and marketers, infused on some level with the passion and commitment of the people who brought you the 911, the 928 GTS, the Cayman. In its environment it is a great asset but the camel ultimately has limited function.
And as we trickle through the streets of the city on the way back to the airport I begin to think that maybe the Cayenne is a bit like Dubai itself.
This after all is a slightly unreal place. It's glass and steel fabulousness has been conjured out of thin air.
Prior to its admittedly cutting edge and high-tech existence there was no need for it. It exists solely as an exercise in targeting a demographic. It's a fancy, however well-designed and beautifully functional, that ultimately the world could live without.
Like the snowdome in the desert, the engineering is admirable, the realisation impressive, but ultimately, what's the point?