Here's Why The Porsche Cayman GT4 Is One Of The Best Cars I've Ever Driven
With every passing minute, I felt even more impressed and even more confident. When I drove the Ford GT a month ago, I was nervous. When I drove the Porsche Carrera GT a few weeks ago, I was nervous. When I drove the Cayman GT4, I was smiling. This is unusual for me, because I generally don't like driving a car that's owned by someone else. When I film these videos, I usually drive the car just long enough to get a decent feel for it, then I turn it back over to the owner so I don't have to worry about smashing it up. Not the Cayman GT4. I would've stayed out there on those roads for hours, hammering the throttle in the corners, if only the owner didn't have to someday resume his profession of cutting open human beings. And so, my drive came to an end. I guided the GT4 back to the owner's house, trying to take in every last bit of my experience, since rising values and low availability suggest I may never have the chance to actually own one of these. I parked it in his driveway, we took a picture with the car, and then I walked back to mine. I don't think anyone has ever been so disappointed to climb back inside an Aston Martin.
54,000. Alfa Romeo discontinued the coupe version of the 4C, but a successor with more power and better performance might arrive in a couple of years. Read more about the Alfa Romeo 4C here. Though the Cayman GT4 is arguably the hottest compact sports car around, it鈥檚 hard not to dream about a more powerful version, especially since the first GT4 is long sold out. The GT4 RS would combine everything Porsche has learned while developing the new 911 GT3 with the advantages of a mid-ship configuration, which would result in a tremendous race car for the road. Updated 03/27/2019: Our spy photographers caught the production version 718 Cayman GT4 testing at Nurburgring.The car is expected to make its world debut at the 2019 Goodwood Festival of Speed. Updated 05/15/2018: Our spy photographers caught the upcoming Porsche Cayman GT4 out for a new testing session around Nurburgring. Porsche is rumored to unveil the new Cayman GT4 in autumn at the 2018 Paris Motor Show. Updated 02/13/2018: Our spy photographers caught the upcoming Porsche Cayman GT4 out for a new testing session during cold winter conditions. New details suggest that the GT4 will be unveiled on March 6, at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show.
Porsche easily could have leveraged the size of its Volkswagen Group overlord to source a four-cylinder engine elsewhere 鈥?Audi, for instance, has a few examples that would鈥檝e done the trick 鈥?but the brand chose to build its own. In the case of the Cayman S, its 2.5-liter was developed alongside the twin-turbo six-cylinders that are being shoved into practically the entire 911 range. The move to smaller engines, not to mention ones that step on the turbocharged toes of the namesake 911 Turbo, has many Porsche purists fearful of the future, though perhaps unfairly. While the Cayman S, along with its 718 Series siblings, received its forced induction four-cylinder in the name of reduced emissions and improved fuel economy, it鈥檚 still plenty capable of cranking out Porsche levels of performance. Output is rated at 350 horsepower and 309 lb-ft of torque, the former of which makes it one of the most powerful production four-cylinders on the market.
Those numbers also make the 2017 Porsche 718 Cayman S more powerful than its six-cylinder predecessor, as well as the last naturally aspirated 911 Carrera. Helping it make 鈥?not to mention withstand 鈥?those impressive output numbers is a host of parts shared with the new twin-turbo boxer engines powering every new 911 not named Turbo or GT3. But maybe more importantly, this little four-pot also employs the same variable-geometry turbo technology that鈥檚 been used by Porsche for more than a dozen years. With the variable-geometry turbo forcing more air into the engine, turbo lag is all but imperceptible from the moment the Cayman S gets rolling. The full helping of torque comes online at 1,900 rpm, which doesn鈥檛 seem particularly early on paper but the engine climbs to that speed so quickly that there鈥檚 barely time to notice the disconnect. With the peaky four pot mounted directly behind the driver, the Cayman S hustles around with an enthusiasm that will be familiar to anyone who鈥檚 driven a Porsche in the past and welcomed by anyone who hasn鈥檛.