Hot pursuit
IT’S GOOD TO be back. Twist the vaguely car-shaped key in the Cayman’s ignition and not four but six cylinders at the small of your back bark and settle into a reassuringly rattly idle. At low revs some of the all-time great Porsches sound like a cutlery drawer being emptied into a distant washing machine, and the GTS continues that theme. It’s not noisy or unpleasant but it is mechanical, gritty. It bodes well for what’s to come.
A quick recap: until this car came along, the only currentgeneration Porsche Cayman you could buy with a flat-six rather than a turbo’d flat-four was the $206K 718 GT4. To both justify the investment in creating the GT4’s 4.0-litre engine and un-wring the hands of enthusiasts (and motoring journalists) who’ve bemoaned the lack of a ‘normal’ Cayman with six cylinders, Porsche has installed it in this new, $172,000 718 GTS 4.0. Power has reduced by 15kW and the GTS has slightly less racy suspension components than the GT4 (and a less racy appearance, going without the big dog’s fixed rear wing and chin spoiler) but it feels like something of a relative bargain. On a fine summer’s day, the GTS feels 95 percent as good as the GT4 for 85 percent of the price.
Like the best Caymans, the getting-to-know-you phase in the GTS is remarkably short. Within moments of its wheels rolling you feel like you know it inside out. And it’s got your back: handling is apparently vice-less at road speeds, as safe and as stable as it is eager. The way it changes direction is quite something, the GTS turning on its heels like an action movie hero in a slow-motion gunfight. Time feels malleable in this car; there’s always space to modify your inputs, to try something different at apparently any stage of a corner.
The GTS’s tactility is enhanced by the six-speed manual gearbox, for the time being the only transmission for the GTS (a PDK paddleshift is on the way).
