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Porsche spent $1.5 billion developing and launching the Cayenne, and it shows. This is easily the most sophisticated SUV on the market, a throne previously occupied by the BMW-engined Range Rover. Designed by a corps of engineers accustomed to building 205-mile-per-hour two-seaters such as the upcoming $440,000 Porsche Carrera GT, the Cayenne is quicker and faster than the Range Rover. It also handles better than many sports cars yet still has a full measure of off-road capability. Porsche let <i>Cond&#233; Nast Traveler</i> drive the Cayenne on both a racetrack and through a boulder-strewn Alabama woodland rife with wet red clay. The track was more fun, but the Cayenne's also a mudder.

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<b>PIT STOPS: Copenhagen</b><br>
From the outside, it looks like a forbidding old cellblock, but the <b>Copenhagen Admiral Hotel</b> is in fact a restored eighteenth-century granary&#151;all enormous exposed beams and brickwork. Overlooking the harbor and right around the corner from cutesy Nyhavn and its row of outdoor caf&#233;s, it's also a short stroll from the Amalienborg Palace in one direction and the city center in the other. Choice rooms are the bilevel sixth-floor harborside suites with snug sleeping lofts; but consider yourself forewarned that the ladderlike stairs require a certain spryness (45-33-74-1414; <a href="http://www.admiralhotel.dk/" target="blank">www.admiralhotel.dk</a>; doubles, $147-$222).