Flawless driving pleasure

BUILT TO THRILL: 718 CAYMAN GT4 A PROPER SPORTS

Something mesmerising about burning rubber around the twisties.

Porsche’s 718 Cayman GT4, at R1.7 million, offers the most dynamic, undiluted, mechanical driving experience of your life, but it’s not a sports car for the PlayStation generation.

In this day and age, high-performance motoring is all about turbo charging, electronics and auto shifting. The cars are built to flatter the average driver, but in doing so, the ability and raw emotion of being able to still drive a real car fast, is lost.

For many this isn’t a problem, but for me there is still something mesmerising about being able to purchase and own a sports car that offers a high-revving naturally aspirated engine, manual shifting a mechanical diff at the rear and big, sticky rubber to make it go around corners really fast.

For this there is only one option on the market, and that is the Porsche 718 Cayman GT4.

The howling part is delivered courtesy of a 4.0-litre flat-six naturally aspirated engine that produces 309kW of power at a heady 7 600rpm and 420Nm of torque from 5 000rpm.

Before I get to the heart of this story, let’s take care of the less important straight-line stuff.

The 718 Cayman GT4 is never going to win every traffic light drag race.

Around 18% of that 309kW is lost here due to the altitude and that leaves you with around 250kW to play with.

As much as I hate to admit it, the one thing electronics do quicker than humans is change gears.

The best 0 to 100km/h time I got was 5.01sec and a 13.14sec quarter mile (400m), while the half mile (800m) and 1km speeds came in at 224km/h and 235km/h respectively, with a claimed top speed of 304km/h.

I probably could have gone a bit quicker, but anybody who knows the Porsche brand knows that messing around doing multiple launch starts with a manual Porsche is going to end up hurting the clutch and I wasn’t going to do that in the quest for the ultimate 0 to 100 km/h time.

Besides, this car is not all about going fast in a straight line. This car was built to thrill in the twisties or at the track. And here it will remain undefeated against cars with a lot more horsepower.

To also put the real-world value of the technical upgrades of the new model into perspective: if you only took the 26kW power gain over the predecessor into account, it is claimed that this new GT4 would lap the Nurburgring 3 sec quicker than before.

But, thanks to aero improvements, tyre choice and chassis fine-tuning, the GT4 lapped the iconic circuit a full 12 sec quicker.

You get the variable Porsche Active Suspension Management sports damping system as standard, with only two settings, firm road and firmer racetrack.

Porsche Stability Management is also standard as expected and this system, that combines electronic stability control and traction control, is fine-tuned for this specific model.

It allows you to explore your limits and the car’s limits more than on a normal Cayman before it intervenes and stops the fun.

Should you have the ability and the insurance cover, then the system can be completely switched off.

Doing this while the Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tyres were still warming up on the 20-inch alloy wheels made for a few holy moments, but once all primed, you could really put the hammer down and the GT4 not only felt like it had massive amounts of grip, it felt like it had all the grip.

Porsche Torque Vectoring with mechanical limited slip differential for added grip and Porsche Active Drivetrain Mounts for less vibration and more precision obviously contribute to this feeling.

A proper sports car is nothing without great brakes and once again the GT4 does not disappoint.

The standard six-pot up front and four-pot units at the back are more than up to the task of reducing speed in a hurry.

Porsche Ceramic Composite Brakes are available as a cost option should be using your GT4 on the track more often than not.