Barely 10 years ago, the idea would have been dismissed as absurd. A Porsche sport-utility vehicle? What've you been smoking?Not that Porsche lacks experience with off-road vehicles. Its engineering wing has developed several all-wheel-drive military vehicles, and specially prepared Porsche racecars ruled the grueling Paris-Dakar raid through the North African desert in the 1980s. Yet compared to automotive giants like General Motors, Toyota or Daimler-Chrysler, Porsche is a cottage manufacturer, with a tiny fraction of the production volume. For 50 years the company carved its niche with quick, nimble, relatively small sports cars, cars built on values almost diametrically opposed to those represented by a big SUV. It speaks to our changing automotive tastes, if not the times, that Porsche felt the need to invest in an SUV and a new factory to build it.Click here to read more