WHY would anyone in his sane mind take a luxurious and expensive vehicle and throw it onto the most car-breaking tracks ever?

In this case we're talking about the Porsche Cayenne S, which costs over $300,000 in Singapore and that's before the cost of preparing it for a rally with equipment like a roll cage, winch and undercarriage protection.

But for the German carmaker, it was an opportunity to prove that there is more to its sports-utility vehicle than just speed, comfort and prestige.

It wanted to show the world that its Cayennes can rough it out with the best of the off-road cars in the market.

Having drawn inspiration from its win in last year's edition of this rally - from Berlin to Lake Baikal - Porsche entered 24 rally-prepped Cayenne S Transsyberias this year. The other cars in the fray this year came from brands like Suzuki, Mercedes and Toyota.

And the Porsches lived up to the challenge. Sure, some of them needed to be towed out of sticky situations but that was usually more a case of bad judgment by the drivers or extremely treacherous conditions that lurked under knee-deep mud or waist-deep water.

If anything, it was the tyres that slowed down the Cayennes.

The Dunlop GrandTrek MT2 rubber was great in the mud and water. It even handled the sand pretty well. But it was no match for the razor-sharp stones that line Mongolia's tracks. As the puncture rate rapidly multiplied, teams were advised to drive conservatively as there were only so many spare tyres in the service truck.

Eventually, despite the valiant efforts of the service crew, not all the Cayennes made it to the finish line. But that was through no fault of the cars. They had the muscle to get us through even the most hair-raising situations. When they did fail, it was mostly a combination of poor judgment by the men inside and bad luck.

Still, the first three slots on the leaderboard - and seven of the top 10 - were filled by Cayennes. And that should be enough to get Porsche's message across loud and clear.

THE TOP 10

1 Rod Millen/Richard Kelsey (Car No. 17, Porsche Cayenne, Team North America 2)
2 Antonio Tognana/Carlo Cassina (Car No. 26, Porsche Cayenne, Team Italy 1)
3 Adel Abdulla/Norbert Lutteri (Car No. 29, Porsche Cayenne, Team Qatar)
4 Lars Kern/Daniel van Kan (Car No. 23, Suzuki Grand Vitara, Youngster Team)
5 Pau Soler/Laia Peinado (Car No. 3, Porsche Cayenne, Team Iberica 2)
6 Simon Garnham/Matt Garnham (Car No. 28, Toyota Landcruiser, The Big White Box)
7 Rene Metge/Silvain Reisser (Car No. 25, Porsche Cayenne, Team France)
8 Oliver Schmidt/Thomas Konig Thomas (Car No. 12, Porsche Cayenne, Team Prototyp)
9 Erik Brandenburg/Stefan Preub (Car No. 5, Porsche Carerra 911, Team Brandenburg)
10 Karim Al-Azhari/Blair Cole (Car No. 33, Porsche Cayenne, Team Dubai)