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Traversing Two Colorado Peaks With the 2017 Porsche Macan GTS

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Photos Credit: Michael Crenshaw

Shutting down Pikes Peak—one of the highest paved roads in the world, and a historic road-racing venue now celebrating its 100th anniversary—is next to impossible. Even causal conversation about shutting down the 12.42-mile long road up to its 14,114-foot peak is brought on with consternation when speaking with the Porsche personnel who made it happen. A bureaucratic nightmare of logistics and leveraging local power, it was a select group of journalists who not only got the privilege to climb it unencumbered by traffic, but also push Porsche’s new 2017 Macan GTS close to the literal edge of no return.

A mayor here, a local sheriff there, and a few holdouts who would have to give the nod to drive the brand new Macan GTS ($67,200 for the base model) up the fabled road, were needed before you factored in the 20 other journalists who were trusted to keep lives intact and the new Porsche on the road; not careening some thousands of feet to certain death in these production cars. These aren’t roll cage-clad race cars, mind you.

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Luckily for all involved, Jeff Zwart—noted cinematographer, and most importantly for this mission, racecar driver who has won the Pikes Peak race—guided us up the mountain at near race speeds in his 2002 Porsche GT2 racecar, allowing the new Macan GTS to safely conquered the stage with precise pace notes. With massive performance potential that follows a long pedigree of great Porsches who have made the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in record time, the Macan GTS proved itself not just another SUV.

Based on the Macan S—an already dynamic, capable, and svelte SUV—the GTS comes equipped with new calibrations to its motor, honed exterior and interior treatments, as well as a newly offered suspension, which we’ll get into in a minute. While the motor’s spec won’t blow you over with leaps and bounds in horsepower over the S model, it’s the way that the GTS delivers power that makes it more sports-oriented. At 20 more horsepower than the S, the GTS has a reworked algorithm allowing it to deliver horsepower in a more provocative way when you power through the gears. Granted, at 14k feet, we’re not only losing oxygen, we’re also losing some engine power, though the 3.0-liter twin-turbocharged V6—thanks to cramming more air into the motor—is more efficient than any naturally aspirated engine would be at this altitude.

Michael Crenshaw

Michael Crenshaw lives in New Jersey with his wife and Shiba Inu Mia. When he's not remodeling his home, Michael contributes to Hypebeast, Scout, Instamotor and other publications mainly focusing on the automobile segment. Michael graduated from Quinnipiac University with a degree in broadcast journalism and out of college he worked with two leading national automotive publications in NYC where he...(Read More)

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