The extent to which Porsche requires the Cayenne to supply its daily bread has fluctuated wildly since March 2003 when Porsche’s SUV went on sale in America.
There have been three major factors affecting the depth of the Cayenne’s importance to Porsche. For starters, there was no Cayman until 2006. Second, there was no Panamera until 2009 and the impact of Porsche’s S-Class/7-Series/A8/XJ/M5 fighter wasn’t truly felt by Porsche USA until 2010. Finally, the first-gen Cayenne was struggling to find buyers in the latter part of 2009 but the second-gen model helped the Cayenne to take off in 2011.