I had a Toureg for a few years when they first came out. Now there's a real off-road 4WD!
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First cousin (1/2 brother) to the Porsche Cayenne. The Cayenne is an excellent off-road/on road SUV. I bought an S a few years ago on a whim and have put 60k miles on it; a lot in the Southwest US. Unlike the Merc. SUV that I had, the Cayenne corners like a Porsche. I will be interested in an X6, Touareg comparison.
Steve
I got a ride in one of the first Cayennes to make it to the US, and it was pretty awesome. We never got off the freeway, but I've never had that neck-jerk reaction in an SUV before. My reservation about the Cayenne is that if you use one in the Northern Plains, where I live, you might have to have it towed two states away if anything breaks down -- Porsche dealers being fairly thin on the ground outide the major metro areas. As far as I know, there are no Porsche dealers in North or South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Nebraska or Wyoming, except in Fargo, N.D., which is right on the Minnesota line, and Omaha, Ne., which is right on the Iowa line...if you broke down in Montana, the closest Porsche dealer might be Denver, or maybe Calgary. If you broke down in Saskatchewan, the closest dealers would be in Winnepeg, Calgary or Edmonton, a *long* way away.
A lot of reviewers suggest that these new crossover vehicles, like the X6 (there are several Japanese models that would fall into the category, but I don't know what they are) are ugly, because of the humpy back -- but I think as people get used to them, there'll be a perceptual change and they will become more attractive. When the BMW design changed eight or ten years ago, with the "Bangle back," a lot of people thought they were ugly, but now that look is all over the place.
If you were not especially looking for comfort, I think the ideal photography vehicle might be a Chevy Avalanche, the short-bed pickup with crew cab (four seats.) They're an SUV-pickup crossover. That would give you plenty of space to carry stuff in the cab (the back seats lay flat) and you could shoot out of the truck bed. I've noticed sometimes when I'm out looking at landscapes that it would be very useful to get the camera lens up four or five feet higher than eye-height.
What I'd *really* like to see is something like an Avalanche hybrid. It's really hard to justify driving around town at ten miles a gallon. Even if you don't care about the price of fuel, just the use of that much gas is becoming problematic.
JC
