GTS badge makes Porsche’s Cayman extra special
BRENDAN MCALEER MAJORCA, Spain — “Mi coche!” cries a young Spaniard, scurrying out of a seaside café in an apron and waving his arms around excitedly, “That’s my car!”
I know how he feels. This Boxster, blood-red paint gleaming in the sunshine, is just the sort of thing to inflame desire. Hunkered down on satin-surfaced alloys and festooned with smoked-out details, it looks fast, nimble, agile, thrilling.
The badge out back tells an even better story — GTS. Has Zuffenhausen finally taken the leash off its modern midengined two seaters?
Um, no. At least not on paper. You see, while the new, most powerful version of the Cayman GTS has a sprightly power-to-weight ratio of just 3.95 kg/h.p., the entry-level 911 is still king of the hill with 3.94 kg/h.p. According to Porsche’s official technical specs, the 911 is also a tenth of a second or so faster from zero to 100km/h, and has a top speed that’s four km/h faster. Oh, poppycock.
Ignore the way Porsche keeps the official specs from stepping on the vaunted 911’s toes; trust me, the GTS marks the point at which the Cayman and Boxster eclipse their bigger brother. If you don’t need a pair of tiny back seats, this is the Porsche you want.
The new GTS versions of the Boxster and the Cayman see a 3.4-litre flat-six gain just 15 horsepower extra, to a total of 330 h.p. and 340 h.p., respectively. The premium you pay over the S model of each car is $12,900 for the Cayman GTS (for a total of $85,900) and $11,700 for the Boxster GTS ($83,900). That averages out to $820 per horsepower — it might be cheaper to buy a herd of actual horses.
However, there’s more to the puzzle than that. With the exacting parsimony we’ve all come to expect from Porsche, Stuttgart has doled out just enough in the way of go-fast goodies to make the GTS actually seem like quite the bargain.
The GTS version of the current Panamera is far and away the most fun variant of that car to drive.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t buy a 911, but if you snap one up without at least taking a good hard look at the two smaller cars parked in your local Porsche showroom, you’d be making a mistake.