GREEN WITH ENVY
The 718 Cayman GT4 is undoubtedly a future classic, but does the recent introduction of PDK to proceedings compromise this utterly brilliant Porsche?
Manual transmission has been the staple of what enthusiasts refer to as a “true driver’s car” for as long as anyone cares to remember. This is especially true in Porsche circles, but — as our current Tech Topics series charting the development of our favourite manufacturer’s automatic and semi-automatic gearboxes proves — developments in non-manual transmission technology has closed the gap considerably. As Bob Dylan once sang, the times they are a-changin’.
Though popular with showroom visitors at the time of manufacture, early Tiptronic-equipped cars, such as auto-loaded 964s and 968s, are rarely cited as desirable in the present, a fact indicated by the much lower purchase price these cars carry when compared to those built with a stick shift. In contrast, PDK is now overwhelmingly the go-to choice for buyers of new Porsche sports cars — it took more than a year for a manual gearbox to appear in the 992-generation 911 line-up after launch, further highlighting how the huge amount of research and development poured into perfecting Porsche’s semiautomatic transmission technology has paid dividends. That said, the claim a stick shift is the only serious choice for a discerning petrolhead hasn’t been ignored, which is why the 981 Cayman GT4 was only offered with a manual gearbox. Until recently, the same was true of its successor, the excellent 718
Cayman GT4. For the 2021 model year, however, both the GT4 and its Spyder counterpart are available with a sevenspeed dual-clutch PDK transmission, reducing the benchmark zero-to-sixty dash from 4.3 seconds to a significantly lower 3.7 seconds and adding near 8lbft torque, resulting in power output of 414bhp (achieved at 7,600rpm, a shade below the standard-spec 8,000rpm redline) matched with 317lb-ft.
AUTOMATIC PILOT
Quick to pounce on the availability of PDK in a GT4 was Richard Roberts, the proud owner of the Python Green example pictured here. In fact, he was so eager to get behind the wheel of a 718 Cayman GT4 PDK, he ordered his car from Porsche Centre Chester the very day it became available on the manufacturer’s online configurator. Many manual gearbox die-hards have long championed the GT4 — both in 981 and 718 guise — as a fine example of Porsche secretly considering PDK to be, well, less engaging, despite Gt3-badged 911s making use of the system for some time. However, one only needs to consider the massive sales success of PDK (when compared to the comparatively low number of manual-configured cars rolling off Porsche’s production lines in recent years) to appreciate it was only a matter of time until the manufacturer’s bean counters sought to stick a semiautomatic transmission into the guts of the GT4. Granted, PDK adds close to thirty kilograms in a mid-engined