Review: Porsche 718 Cayman GT4
Andrew Frankel
On paper the Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 is just about the most delicious prospect you could imagine for this kind of money. In these days of downsized motors, forced induction and paddle shifts comes a mid-engined Porsche with a 4.0-litre, normally-aspirated flat-six engine and a six-speed manual gearbox. Two pedals are not even an option, not yet at least.
The reality of the Cayman GT4 (I still can’t get used to that pointless 718 appendage and suspect I now never will) is very little different, at least so long as you remember that this is the entry point to Porsche’s GT range and has neither the punch nor the price point of a GT3.
So hats off to the delightfully crazy people of the Porsche Motorsport department who decided not to simply turn up the boost on the 2.5-litre four-cylinder turbo motor in the Cayman GTS until the requisite 414bhp appeared on the dyno sheet (which the engine would have taken with ease). Instead it removed the turbos from the 911’s engine and both bored and stroked it out to 4.0-litres, which I think we can agree is going the extra mile.
What results is a car with less torque than Cayman GTS and because of that and the fact you can spec a double clutch transmission for the GTS, one that’s actually slower to 62mph than the GTS and no quicker to 100mph.
But if ever there were a car in which how fast it goes means nothing relative to how it goes fast, this surely is it. The engine is not savage – I expect we’ll have to wait for its GT3 application before we see that – but it is sweet and sonorous. And it makes you work: it won’t pull its hardest until 5,000rpm is on the clock, so you have to use that delicious gearbox to ensure you’re always in the right ratio, which is of course an entirely good thing. The more a car involves you, the more involving it will be.
Even so, and just like the 2015 Cayman GT4, the powertrain is cast as an entirely supporting role to the chassis whose suspension is modified almost beyond recognition compared to a standard Cayman, including borrowing the entire front end of the GT3. On the right road, driven with a commensurate level of commitment, the car is mesmerising. Grip levels on standard Michelin Cup 2 tyres are dazzling, the car’s balance, poise and accuracy sufficient to make normal sporting cars look and feel slow-witted and stumbling by comparison.
And yet it does this while retaining decent ride comfort, a quiet cabin and, if you so choose, all the trappings available in any other Cayman. Indeed if it were not for the Alcantara and smattering of GT4 badges in the cabin you might indeed mistake it for another Cayman in normal usage. Some will see that as a weakness, others as beguiling strength. Me? I just appreciate the fact that there still remain enough mavericks out there to fly in the face of now conventional thinking and use the money of the world’s largest automobile company produce a car where the provision of pure driving pleasure in a form you can enjoy every single day is the single over-riding priority. Enjoy it while you can.
Stat attack: Porsche 718 Cayman GT4
Price £75,348
Engine: 4.0-litre, six-cylinder petrol
Transmission: six-speed manual, rear-wheel-drive
Power/Torque: 414bhp @ 7,600rpm and 420Nm (310lb ft) @ 5,000rpm
0-62mph: 4.4 seconds
Top speed: 189mph
Combined economy: 25.7mpg
Kerb weight: 1,420kg
Review
Porsche
Cayman
