SPECS & VERDICT Model Engine
The PASM bit of kit is combined with 265/35 tyres at the back on 20in wheels, but there’s still that peculiar Cayman/Boxster characteristic of four-wheel drifting when it loses grip. A Cayman doesn’t actually lose grip, but on sandy or dirty roads the car will four-wheel understeer. Bit scary, that...
However, to be perfectly clear, this is not an understeering car. In fact, for a road car it’s so naturally balanced that the way you drive it entirely dictates its handling pretence. Through fast corners, for me, there is the typical mid-engined worry of it sliding away from underneath you as you feel the centre of balance right there up your tush, but it never does, and through slower corners it’s wholly dependent on your use of the brake and throttle pedal. Whether it washes wide or tucks in is all on you.
The steering is so quick and direct, it’s hardly a feature. It’s just there, and it’s near perfect for an electric system and it makes the car turn. That’s it. The light unloaded front end makes the wonderful, thinrimmed and relatively large-diameter ( just how it should be) wheel quiver in your hands to the tune of the blemished road. A surface might look flat, but it never is, and the Cayman GTS susses out every dip and dimple. I would have liked a few hundred more revs, just to get it closer to that manic experience you get in a GT3, which leaves you in disbelief the first time you near its 9,000rpm limit. Premonition and years of conditioning tell you to shift at 7,400rpm, like you do at the Cayman GTS’s power peak, but the GT3’s flat-six has way more in store, and the really good stuff is there, where at first you daren’t look, right at the edge of the thin red line. This GTS is missing that, the last 500 revs where you’ll find your disbelief. Great engine, metallic and mechanical, but even with a bit of extra power here,
The car is so natually balanced that the way you drive it dictates its handling pretence
it just does what you expect it to do. Something tells me Porsche might have more in store, like it’s busy polishing some ‘R’ badges.
I can’t really fault this car, especially not at Dh258,400 (base). Then again, when I drove it in Portugal I couldn’t really fault the Dh205,000-base Cayman either. Cayman GTS – it’s just a name. Don’t read too much into it. It’s just a Cayman S+. And they couldn’t exactly call it the SS.