Driving pleasure in its purest form - or Touring - is what the T moniker is supposed to be all about when attached to a Porsche. Although, it seems more a marketing ploy than anything when emblazoned on the rump of an iconic 911 - you might as well just spec a Carrera how you want it. So PR jargon aside, is the Cayman better with a T? For a start you get the 鈥榣esser鈥?2.0-litre flat four turbo, and not the bigger 2.5-litre. Still, although it sits on the bottom rung of the image ladder, the water-cooled 1988cc flat four is actually a decent unit. It鈥檚 happier to rev and with 220kW and 380Nm pushing around 1350kg, the boosted four is not slow. A 0-100km/h time of 5.1sec (with the preferred six-speed manual) and a 275km/h top speed is the proof in the pudding. Select the rapid-fire seven-speed PDK and the 0-100km/h claim drops to 4.7sec with Sport Plus.
Thanks to the impressive real-life performance of the downsized engine, the 718 Cayman T doesn鈥檛, unlike the 911 T, feel like an otherwise complete athlete with a weak heart. The T pack combines Sport Chrono and PSM with an in-between semi-hooligan-like Sport Plus mode, boasting PTV torque vectoring and a mechanical diff lock. The steering rack, borrowed from the 911 Turbo, is 10 per cent faster and the sports exhaust is bimodal. Launch control and the Sport Response turbo boost button is fitted with the PDK 鈥檅ox. Handfuls of extra money buy carbon-ceramic brakes, which this Cayman requires about as urgently as Clive Palmer needs another 鈥楳ake Australia Great鈥?billboard. Inside there鈥檚 sport seats (anything from the standard pews to the expensive 918-style lightweight carbon-fibre buckets), Sport-Tex upholstery and fabric loops for door handles. PCM is a no-cost option.However, you pay extra for air-conditioning, sat-nav, Power Steering Plus, dynamic LED headlights, an Alcantara-trimmed steering wheel and a shortened shifter. There鈥檚 something about Porsche sports cars that no other manufacturer can match.
It doesn鈥檛 really matter whether you are driving a 718 Cayman T, a 911 GT3 RS, a Cayman GT4 or a 911 Turbo S - they all handle, respond and communicate in a totally involving fashion. Yes, the steering might be a little quicker in the GT cars, the suspension softer in others and the handling more neutral in the mid-engined models. However, there isn鈥檛 much variation in your inputs; the ratio between cornering grip and entry speed, or the lift-off attitude, remain largely the same. Irrespective of engine size and position, power and torque, weight and performance, all two-door Porsches are spun from the same dynamic ilk. When warm, the bigger tyres (235/35 ZR20 front and 265/35 ZR20 rear) instil more lateral grip as well as fierce traction, but the price you pay is a well-below par ride on country roads. In crosswind conditions and when following ruts, the directional stability can be unsettling at times, and those carbon-ceramic brakes don鈥檛 like rain or sub-zero temperatures. Active transmission mounts cushion abrupt tip-in and tip-out manoeuvres. The four-cylinder engine鈥檚 soundtrack isn鈥檛 quite as throaty and strong-voiced as the old six, but the reality is that the acoustics aren鈥檛 really an issue, nor is the somewhat underwhelming on-paper performance. Ultimately the Cayman T sounds meaner and answers more promptly to throttle inputs, but it is also harder sprung and more firmly damped - even before you dial in Sport. Still, the T feels like a somewhat brawnier and, subjectively, faster car. The do-it-yourself manual ties in with the back-to-basics nature over the ruthlessly efficient PDK, because at the end of the day, the Cayman T is all about a pure, raw and involving experience.
Settings on each device for maximum quality were used, and the frames were extracted from video while the car was in motion. Latest firmware in each as of Jan-2017 was used. We didn鈥檛 cherry pick these images - we compared multiple frames in different situations and saw similar results. We really wish more vendors would boost the video quality as it makes a huge difference. We created a new resolution test with the BlackVue DR900S-2CH and the Viofo A110 in June 2018 in my Tesla. For this test we used the latest firmware for both, and used the highest quality options - 2160p extreme for the front DR900, 1440p for the Viofo, and 1080p using the DR900鈥檚 rear unit pointed forward. All three camera lens were within 3 inches of each other, running at the same time. You can click on the image above to see a larger view (but 50% of actual size due to how large the image is). We did brighten the A119 image slightly to give all three images a similar brightness, but otherwise did no other modifications.
We also carefully picked the images from each camera to be matched within one video frame time-wise. The colors in the DR900 appear a bit more natural to us. The clarity of the A119 1440p image is very close to the DR900 2160p front camera, but the DR900 is capturing a wider view requiring more pixels. The manufacturer鈥檚 specs claim they cover the same wide angle, which does not appear to be true. We get some vehicle glare, which is typical of all dashcams. We normally use a polarizing filter to reduce glare, but removed them for these tests. See below for more about polarizing filters. This last set of images were taken while the car was moving at 25 mph. In other tests, even at 70 mph, the dashcam pictures hold up quite well. Ok, did you identify the silver car as a new Model 3 without a license plate?