LOWS: Inattentive throttle, feather-light and uncertain steering, reluctant handler. HIGHS: Faultless interior execution, rock-solid structure, great-sounding stereo. Also, although the Touareg might carry the second-lowest as-tested price at $53,265, that's still $6765 more than what VW led us to believe the last time around. And with a hefty 5412-pound curb weight, the Touareg had the worst weight-to-power ratio of this group (17.5 pounds for each VW horse to pull, compared with 14.3 for the Infiniti). In this test of utes, which is more focused on performance, the VW's Audi-sourced V-8 was the weakling. Besides, it's our magazine, not yours, so zip it. You might ask why sixes were mixed with eights, but that's the way the pricing came out. Half the vehicles in the previous comparo were powered by six-cylinder engines, which made the VW's 310-hp V-8 seem like a nitro-burning dragster.

None of the competitors assembled here was available for last January's eight-truck flog. 'Reg-N-Effect: 2015 Volkswagen Touareg Tested! Besides, off-roading is so uncomfortable. Also, both came with high-performance street tires with shallow tread that would have hobbled even a Hummer, off-road, anyway. These add cost and weight (you can order either vehicle without the air suspension), which is unfortunate for the Germans.

The Porsche and the VW, which were designed together and share many parts, do have low-range gearing (just like a Jeep CJ7!) and air bladders that will raise their bodies until they look really silly. We would not go off-road, though, because, well, why would we? Sure, all these vehicles have all-wheel drive, but even the kid at an Athens plant store recognized them as 'a buncha fancy wagons.' The Cadillac and the Infiniti are based on sports sedans (the CTS and the G35, respectively), not pickup trucks. We would crank the air-conditioning units to full chill, play with the navigation systems, adjust our power seats, raise power-adjustable suspensions for no reason at all, and still sprint to 60 mph in an average of seven seconds just because we could. But, you know, screw that! It's our power, after all, and we're going to use all of it as often as we want. Until we ran out of gas, which, in a group that averages 15 mpg, wouldn't take long. With the equivalent of 954 kilowatts of electric power pumping from these pumped-up utes, we could have powered a sizable neighborhood. All told, we had 1280 horsepower split fairly evenly among the four V-8 engines that power the Cadillac SRX (320 hp), the Infiniti FX45 (315), the Porsche Cayenne S (335), and the Volkswagen Touareg (310).

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