Gemballa Tornado GTR700 Cayenne: What were they thinking?
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Okay, guys. This isn't funny anymore. We all get that the Porsche Cayenne, though it has its talents, is no prize pig down at the beauty pageant. But this is just mean. Like a caricature of the Cayenne itself, we can applaud the go but shudder at sight of the show. Under the hood, Gemballa has primped and preened the twin-turbo V8 to produce somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 horsepower. It will also offer a 2WD conversion – that's got to be a first – to go with the severely dropped ride height and beefed-up suspension.
The mad-science plastic surgery is another story, however, as Gemballa opens up the Cayenne's mouth, adds a carbon-fiber hood insert, cuts open a whole mess of new vents, throws on some Ferrari-esque tail-lights and a set of roof-mounted brake lights to boot. Inside they've added fully-adjustable racing buckets front and back, separated by a strange-looking full-length center console. Maybe Gemballa was trying to prove a point when it decided to mix styling cues from the Carrera GT with its ugly step-sister the Cayenne. Whatever it is, we don't get it.
[Source: Gemballa via Winding Road]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
MajorGeek 12:52PM (2/17/2008)
You said it all here, not much need to read further, nonetheless look at the pictures:
"We all get that the Porsche Cayenne, though it has its talents, is no prize pig down at the beauty pageant."
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why not the LS2/LS7? 1:15PM (2/17/2008)
There's no excuse for the Cayenne, let alone this.
"Every Porsche is a race car."
My ass.
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zreeb 1:15PM (2/17/2008)
I like it.
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Mike 1:21PM (2/17/2008)
I think this looks better than the standard Cayanne... but that's not saying much.
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Moe 1:44PM (2/17/2008)
The standard Cayenne really isn't that bad, especially after its recent facelift. Gemballa, however, just doesn't get tired of making Porsches uglier.
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jcar302 1:35PM (2/17/2008)
I don't think it looks as bad as the title of the article suggests it does.
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Rob 1:45PM (2/17/2008)
I would say this certainly has ethnic styling cues, dog.
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The tECHIDNA 2:15PM (2/17/2008)
Take off the roof HMSLs (high-mounted stop lamps), *keep it in black*, and it actually doesn't look that bad.
However, the real WTF is with the center console. That is the worst ergonomics for a manual shifter that I've ever seen. Please tell me the stock Cayenne is not like that...
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John 2:52PM (2/17/2008)
Very witty and funny....NOT.. Just far fetched.
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John 2:58PM (2/17/2008)
I was replying to rob, who said something about "ethnic styling cues". What an idiot.
The black one would look decent if they removed all that unnecessary stuff from the front end
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Jason parry 3:31PM (2/17/2008)
Hey Autoblog: you guys should do a "what were they thinking of the day" type thing just like ebay find of the day. There have been so many crappy paint jobs and bad tuner cars recently you could just have a regular column under that type of heading...just a thought!
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Larry 4:00PM (2/17/2008)
Hey, they are just trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator of people with too much "new money!"
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clevershark 4:12PM (2/17/2008)
Somewhere, someone sat down and thought "what the world needs is a Porsche Cayenne, but actually uglier and with less interior space for the passengers. Also one that's lowered so much it's completely useless off-road, so we'll make a 2wd version." To me the proverbial WTF is the fact that he was able to find people with money to agree with that assessment.
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madgamer 6:00PM (2/17/2008)
You guys are crazy, a 2wd 700hp slammed drifter SUV sounds awesome to me, and I even like most of the bodywork. Chop the roof like the rinspeed thing and you would have the coolest SUV ever.
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Doug 8:29PM (2/17/2008)
"fully-adjustable racing buckets front and back"
I've never seen a racecar seat with a TV mounted in it...
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rvr 9:20PM (2/17/2008)
are you kidding, this thing is awesome! ok, so some of the details are over the top, but overall i dig it. it looks like an illustration of a much meaner cayenne. oh wait, it is an illustration. all these are renderings, right?
anyway, you guys need to lighten up, this thing is fun.
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Driver X 9:35PM (2/17/2008)
This makes the Aztec look good!
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Zandor 3000 9:35PM (2/17/2008)
I don't get why Autoblog complains about the way the Cayenne looks, as if everyone agrees with them... Blogger or not, aren't you supposed to report the facts as a journalist?
I think the Cayenne is a gorgeous looking car in stock form and this Gemballa version is f*cking hot if you ask me.
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Andrew Tanasescu 10:52PM (2/17/2008)
I know maybe what they were thinking
"Hey lets take Cayenne, make it as ugly as we can without making it obvious that what we are doing ridiculous, price it extremely high, and see how many people will buy it"
Then Porsches Cayenne sales go through the roof cause of the demand of the Gemballa Tornado
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catgirlshyla 12:07AM (2/18/2008)
And to think this is the same company that made the Blackbird......
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