Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 ePerformance

SILENCE. NOT SOMETHING YOU EXPECT when you’ve just fired-up Porsche Motorsport’s hottest new development prototype. But then there’s never been a Porsche Motorsport product quite like the 718 GT4 ePerformance.

This full-EV machine – which packs a 1073bhp punch and can lap most racetracks faster than a 992 Cup car – is billed as the future of Porsche’s one-make motorsport business. This makes the GT4 ePerformance a Big Deal, both for marking the moment Porsche took another emotive step away from internal combustion, and for the company accepting that its motorsport customers (of which there are thousands) will expect and want to go racing in EV machines.

Crucially, it’s also a pointer to what we can expect from Porsche’s future EV sports cars, as everything learned in the development of this motorsport test mule will inevitably be fed into future Porsche road car programmes. This makes our test of the ePerformance a tantalising first taste of what Porsche’s core sports car range will offer when fully electrified models eventually come to market.

Porsche had two starting points for this project. The first and most obvious is the 718 Cayman GT4 Cup,