On the road the Cayman’s powertrain borders on perfection. It offers just about everything you’d expect: speed, response, flexibility and, most important, character.
The inlet noise has been tuned to yelp a touch earlier in the rev range and there’s a hint of coarseness over the last 1500rpm which adds a rawness that goads you into using all the available revs more often. A fine gearshift action and six well-judged ratios enhance the feeling even more.
We shouldn’t be surprised by this –the Cayman has an engine ideally placed for roadholding and agility, and Porsche wrote the damper handbook – but the aspect that exceeds expectations is just how accessible the car’s treats are to the average driver.
Where a 911 can feel intimidating, the Cayman doesn’t. Both cars have Porsche’s delicate stability system (PSM), but the intervention comes much later on the Cayman because it doesn’t suffer the same extremes of over- or understeer.
You can take liberties with the Cayman. It is a car willing to allow a driver a second chance. It is so agile, so keen to change direction that adding steering inputs through the middle of a turn is entirely acceptable. This isn’t possible in a 911.
Where mid-engined cars can prove less satisfactory is on the fringes of grip levels. But not so the Cayman: it hasn’t the power (or limited-slip differential) to slide at will, but it’s a mid-engined sports car that can be driven with a degree of predictable, enjoyable slip previously only familiar to Noble owners.
Braking has long been a Porsche obsession and the 318mm/299mm drilled and ventilated discs, gripped by four-piston calipers front and rear, do everything that could possibly be asked of them on the road. That the Cayman will stop from 60-0mph in 2.7sec means nothing compared to the manner in which these brakes will handle sustained abuse.