Sponsored The 2022 Porsche Macan: Pull Away From The Pack

In the 2010s, car companies forgot how to be interesting. The SUV shrank, the sedan grew and the age of the boring, cookie-cutter crossover began. Settling became the norm, and practicality won the war against excitement.

Well … not completely. There is a company that still remembers how to make a car with a soul. How to have the practicality of a small SUV without churning out another shapeless blob defined by the inclusion of a 10-inch touchscreen versus a 9-inch touchscreen.

That company is Porsche, and the vehicle in question is called the Macan.

Life’s Short

You don’t get much time on this earth.

How are you going to spend it? Are you going to commute in with the same car your co-workers have? In a car that just keeps up with traffic, and is just another appliance to be bought and forgotten about? Is it wrong to make a piece of machinery a metaphor for how you live your day-to-day?

No. To all of those questions. If you can wake up and get behind the wheel of something practical but not oversized, that makes your heart beat and makes you enjoy the grind, then you’ve struck gold. Or, as Porsche calls it, Papaya Metallic.

At its heart, the Macan is an enabler. It’s the distilled essence of youth, and Porsche, drawing on more than a century of engineering excellence, built this classy compact SUV to make sure that you maximize life. To make sure that you have enough space for any adventure, and enough power to make the drive adventurous on its own.

In short, a car that you can look over your shoulder as you walk into the coffee shop and smile with pride at the piece of art you arrived in. Because the Macan looks as good as it makes you feel to drive.

Instantly Recognizable

Industry professionals would call it a “design language.” It’s a motif that a manufacturer will follow to let you know that, yes, this is something done with purpose by an artist. Porsche is one of the kings of the concept, because when you look at a Porsche, you know it’s something special.

Lately, in addition to the iconic sloped hood and tapered rear that the German brand is so known for, Porsche has been pushing wild colors that will instantly grab the eyes of anyone in the vicinity. The Macan is no different, and with colors more traditionally found on the legendary GT3 roadworthy racecars like Python Green, Gentian Blue Metallic and, yes, Papaya Metallic, you can leave the gray world behind.

New for 2022 are subtle details that create an even more unified look across the Porsche lineup while still managing to let the Macan stand out on its own. The grille is more reminiscent of the bigger Cayenne, but it lends itself well to the smaller vehicle. It gives it a sportier look, as if to say that the twin turbos under the hood absolutely need as much air as possible. The lift above the rear window echoes racecar-spoiler aesthetics, and the redesigned rear end with its single, unobstructed red strip seems pulled directly off the Taycan.

In short, it’s a car that’s made from beautiful parts, and that synergy creates a beautiful experience outside and in.

Tactile

Without a doubt, the interior of the Macan is where the biggest year-to-year change has occurred. The new Macan has a full complement of beautiful touch-capacitive buttons that are seamlessly molded into your driving environment. With the addition of a 10.9-inch touchscreen, there is a perfect blend of modern technology and world-class design. That’s not the most prominent feature, though.

The Macan’s most prominent feature is you, the driver.

Between enough steering-wheel controls to make Lewis Hamilton feel at home and easy-to-read individual icons neatly organized around the gear selector, you can customize the ride, comfort and displayed information without having to take your eyes off the road and navigate a clumsy tablet. You can create your comfort zone while you drive.

The interior doesn’t stop there, though. While the driver might be the center of the Macan’s world, the whole point of the Macan is that it’s big enough to handle the ins and outs of normal life. That might mean picking up the crew after a project ends or showing around the new clients.

That’s no problem for this hot crossover. You can absolutely load it up with people and have everyone on the edge of their seats. Not because there isn’t enough room; there’s plenty of space for four full-grown adults. It’s because, even fully loaded, the Macan has more than enough power to pull ahead of traffic. The hard part will be getting them out of the car.

In fact, it’s that intersection of everyday practicality and Porsche’s legendary commitment to performance that makes the Macan so easy to justify.

Space for Life

It’s actually really easy to see why the small SUV became the dominant species on the road. People are active. There are dogs that need to get to the park, fresh ingredients that need to make it to the kitchen and presentations that should have been on your desk last week ready to be set up on the other side of town. Naturally, cars go bigger to accommodate people living bigger lives.

There is a fine line to walk, though, between having a behemoth that navigates downtown as well as a whale in a waterpark and having to put the avocados back because there won’t be space in the boot.

The Macan almost nails the balance perfectly. To be brutally honest here, you may find yourself wishing for just a couple of more inches of room behind the rear seats. With the seats down, you and one other person will have all the room you could ever need. If you do end up in the position where you need to pick up three others from the airport, you may have to decide which friend needs to leave their luggage behind.

That’s a very minor complaint, though. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the Macan is the perfect size. After all, as much fun as it is to share success with others, it’s not all there is to life. You should be enjoying the fruits of your labor first and foremost, and the Macan makes that so easy to accomplish.

Daring

Porsche says “Dare forward,” as if to say that the Macan is the key to getting the most out of your day and of challenging the norm in order to extract every ounce of life from your time here on this planet.

But there’s another, less subtle meaning to the slogan. Dare to press the skinny pedal down a little further. Dare to experience what a twin-turbo 2.9-liter V-6 can do when it’s built by a company that has been injecting adrenaline into society since its inception. Dare to push what is, simply put, one of the greatest seven-speed automatics ever designed. When safe, of course.

The car enthusiasts among you will praise the handling as feeling like a rear-wheel-drive car, and you’ll be able to spend hours explaining what a “doppelkupplung,” or dual-clutch transmission, is and why it matters so much that the Macan has one.

You don’t need to be an enthusiast to feel the excitement. You don’t need to know what all those terms and numbers mean. Porsche is happy to provide the details for you. The new Macan, after all, has 59 more horsepower and an advanced, adaptive suspension. But in the end, it’s about the feeling you get when you push the car just a little bit. When the G’s hold you in the seat and the day disappears behind you at an accelerated pace. When you grip that GT steering wheel and you wonder if you can transfer a few seconds from your commute back into your life.