California's uniquely relaxed biennial car event this year clashed rather inconveniently with the Tokyo event, but seemed surprisingly unaffected by it.
It wasn't an easy competition to win. The battle might easily have been won by the surprisingly elegant-looking long wheelbase Range Rover, destined to make buyers happy on many an emerging export market, or the handsome-looking Jaguar F-type Coupé, which has a sense of rightness about its styling that eludes even the first-launched convertible version.
But while those are merely models completing a range: the Porsche represents a foray into a brand new model sector - that for compact SUVs - and if it achieves anything like the 50,000 annual sales Porsche bosses have been predicting, it will rapidly become the fastest-selling model in the marque's 65-year history.
On a balmy Californian open day which ended with a few unseasonal showers, most people agreed that, even if it wasn't exactly spectacular, the top-spec Macan Turbo made a good fist of embodying its makers' claims for 268kph performance and supercar acceleration with a squat, wide-shouldered shape that was purposeful and full of character. But, crucially, it was not so butch as to disenfranchise the many female users who will buy it and use it.
Dipan Sur
Viraaj Bhatnagar
