What a time to be alive! Particularly if you’re a fan of big, flashy luxury SUVs. Not only do you have way more of them to choose from than ever before, these days they even fall into neat little categories to make the choice that little bit easier. There are the slow and stately ones that offer up limo-rivalling luxury. There are the tough ones with space-age sensors and serious hardware that let them traverse boulder fields without breaking a sweat. And then there’s the third and arguably most exciting category of the bunch – sports luxury SUVs. It’s not just a matter of stuffing 500bhp into a high-riding 4x4 either; no, the best of this bunch are designed to handle well too. Distil some more and you’ll reach the cream of the crop – SUVs that are just plain, outright fun around a winding road, and which might even sacrifice some traditional 4x4 qualities in this pursuit.
You don’t need to ask where the Cayenne features on the luxury SUV spectrum. It’s a Porsche, and even with just a diesel V6 under its bonnet, boy, does it live up to the name. Its physics-defying abilities got the world talking when it first came around in 2002, but let’s not forget who pioneered the idea of the sporty luxury SUV. It was BMW. The first-generation X5 was unashamedly road biased and famously felt no less agile than a big sedan. The latest one does too, and by that yardstick, the X6 should be even better, right? After all, it’s lower and lighter than its seven-seat sibling and, in India, comes with an even more powerful diesel engine. If driving pleasure is all you crave from your luxury SUV, these two are as sporty as they come, and we’re going to find out which is best.
Dipan Sur
Viraaj Bhatnagar
Suraj Viswanathan
Hormazd Sorabjee
