If I ever recover from our last family holiday in the Cayenne (to Ireland last Easter) enough to want another one, and we take Ted the Jack Russell Terrier, he will get half the boot space. With four women ready to fill up the other half, I’ve been looking for a roof box as a just-in-case measure.

New Porsche roof boxes are silly money, so a used box is the obvious solution. eBay is usually the best place to find used Porsche accessories, and I’ve had a saved search for Porsche roof boxes running for a while. A quick flick on the search one lunchtime last week found a black Porsche roofbox out in Suffolk. Looking at the seller’s other items, he also had a set of 19″ Cayenne wheels with winter tyres.

eBay Porsche Wheels and Tyres

Having finally killed off the part-worn winters from last year, I needed replacement winter tyres and I wanted a roofbox, so one quick email offer later, both items were mine. I arranged collection for the following morning and duly set off after dropping the kids to school. It’s a 200-mile round trip from here to Suffolk on the east coast of England. Sat nav said a couple of hours with a few country short cuts, some of which turned out to be excellent roads. Noted for future 911 drives.

One great thing about Porsche ownership is the variety of interesting people who run around in these cars. Having met undertakers, dentists, truck drivers and more through buying and selling Porsches and parts, this latest deal was with Sean: an obviously talented property developer.

Sean’s place (above) was an amazing manor house. Seemingly 150 years old, it turned out to be a new build using carefully chosen materials. As someone who is still buying reclaimed building supplies for an ongoing Victorian house rebuild, the house appeared to have stood since the 1850s or earlier. It was absolutely beautiful: the pics are from the architect’s website.

We fitted the roof box on its Porsche roof rails and threw the wheels in the Cayenne. Ted approved of the boot space (below): now all we need is a boot divider for him. And some space to store this massive bit of luggage. Shouldn’t be a problem when the garage is built.

Modern Cayenne not as Well Built as Original

Sean was selling the roof box, as he had recently bought his third Cayenne, but the new Porsche Cayenne doesn’t come with the roof channels required to fit these boxes. A previous owner of a V8 like mine, a Turbo and now a new Turbodiesel, he felt that newer Cayennes had been lessened by removing items found on early cars, to make new cars easier to manufacture. This included the roof channel system and raised windscreen edges: the lack of which allowed water to run straight in through open front windows. Wet shirt sleeves are not appreciated when you’ve shelled out sixty grand or more on a car.

A similar thing happened to early BMW Minis. BMW couldn’t make money retaining the substantial build quality of the first production examples, so the cars got cheaper to build over time. It’s also said that lowering production costs was one motivation for the transition from air-cooled to water-cooled 911s, but let’s not go there.

Porsche Roof Box is a Thule Product

Having since spent an hour refining the fit, sliding it forward a bit to clear the DAB aerial and allow the boot to open fully, the roofbox – which is a Thule product, painted in black and rebadged as Porsche – fits the Cayenne really well.

Screwed to the genuine roof rails/cross bars using custom fittings, it opens from both sides and is rattle-free over bumps. There’s a bit of wind noise at 90mph and a minor impact on fuel economy, but no more than 10% lost. I’ve run with it for five days now and been impressed. A good buy for £200!