PORSCHE 718 CAYMAN GT4 RS
❝ The GT4 RS is the Cayman Porsche resisted making ❞
“M he Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS is one of the marque’s most thrilling and special GTS yet.” So read the first line of our five-star road test verdict on the GT4 RS, and given that Porsche’s GT model history has not been short of thrilling or special cars, that’s no small compliment. Much of the special feeling comes from the car’s engine. There are those of us at Autocar who stood around a computer monitor listening again and again to the sound it made as road test editor Matt Saunders took it to the redline during his video first drive. It had to be heard to be believed, he said. But only when the car arrived for full testing with us in the UK did we realise how right he was. This 4.0-litre unit is an astonishingly good engine: sharp and penetratingly fierce when you wind it towards its 9000rpm – 9000rpm! – redline. Whether Porsche’s GT department in Weissach intended it this way or not, one can’t help interpreting it as a celebration of the combustionengined sports car at the most vivid and affecting height it might reasonably reach. But you don’t need sentimentality to score five stars in a road test; the engine is only half of the overall experience – if that – and the rest of the GT4 RS’S package is every bit as compelling. Flick back through our road test sections: Performance, five stars; Handling and Stability, also five stars; Design and Engineering, five stars; and Buying and Owning, five stars again – although while the ‘buying’ part for this strictly limited-production model wasn’t exactly easy, it only makes the ‘owning’ side of the equation more special. This is the Cayman for which we had been waiting 17 years, since the model’s introduction. It’s the Cayman Porsche resisted making because it was cautious of stealing too much limelight from the 911. Until the GT4 RS, only the Cayman R and non-rs GT4 had been allowed to delve so deeply into the untapped mid-engined potential. Porsche gave it the works: clever aerodynamics, fabulous brake cooling, lightened and stiffened everything, all designed to engage and enthral. Most of us couldn’t remember the last time a road car felt this purposeful and special – it’s in Ferrari 458 Speciale territory in that respect. And it’s wonderful on a circuit, too, where you can indulge in its precision and feedback, as we noted in Britain’s Best Driver’s Car 2022. It’s terrific to note that it was a different kind of car to the 911 GT3, that these cars ultimately do different things and satisfy in different ways. If a company made one car this good, you’d rejoice. That the same company can make both is remarkable.