2015 Porsche Cayman GTS
Go for a drive, long or short, in a Porsche Cayman S and if you are
afflicted by the bug – if you get what this magazine chunters on about week in,
week out – then you will climb out feeling somewhere between elated and
gob-smacked.
Elated because what you will have experienced is a sports car that
provides joy to its driver at pretty much every single rotation of its tyres;
gob-smacked because there’s a fair chance that you won’t have experienced
anything quite like it on four wheels ever before, so rich is the seam of
communication between car and driver, so lovely is the Cayman S to drive.
Now Porsche has gone one better and given us the GTS version of its
latest Cayman. And having driven it, having sampled first-hand how giddy this
car can make you feel when you are going for it over a great road, I am
struggling to find words to describe it.
Alcantara-trimmed cabin gets Sport
Chrono package as standard; PDK gearbox is an option, but manual is preferable
in this car
You probably think that I’m going way over the top at this point.
You might even think that I’m making it up, or that I’ve lost my grasp on
reality, having been subjected to a constant pummeling of high g-forces and
monumental horsepower over the past few weeks in the form of Ferrari’s LaFerrari,
the Lamborghini Huracán and the McLaren P1.
But don’t fret: I haven’t lost it. The Cayman GTS has brought me
back down to earth, post-hyper car-fest, with a delicious kind of a whumpf, a
bit like when you free-fall face down into a giant duvet. And the landing has
been, well, really rather well timed, to be honest, because I’m not joking when
I say that the Cayman GTS could, at a pinch, be the most delightful car I’ve
driven this year.
2015 Porsche Cayman GTS – Rear
Why? Because it’s more than fast enough, thanks, and the way in
which it interacts with your hands and backside is, in its way, every bit as
incredible as anything a LaFerrari or a P1 can make you feel. Genuinely, the
Cayman GTS is that good.
So what’s different about the GTS compared with the regular old
Cayman S? For starters, the power from its 3.4-litre flat six has risen gracefully
to a rousing 336bhp, while its torque has also swollen, to 280lb ft. The sports
exhaust also becomes a standard fitment.
At the same time, the car’s kerb weight has been trimmed to a
feather-light 1345kg and, as a combination; this makes it a decent chunk
quicker than the already pretty brisk S version. Think 0-62mph in 4.9sec with a
manual gearbox or 4.6sec with the optional PDK and you get an idea of how rapid
it has become.
Better still, though, is what Porsche has done to the suspension. As
standard, the GTS gets the once optional PASM and Sport Chrono packages,
straight out of the showroom. But as a no-cost option, you can also choose
something called the ‘sports chassis’, which does away with the electronic
dampers and gives you traditional, analogue shock absorbers plus a further 10mm
drop in ride height, the regular GTS already sitting 10mm lower than the S. And
this is where the real gold doth lie.
