Would the real Porsche sports car please stand up? For years Stuttgart main-
tained that car was the 911, doing its best to stifle the Cayman/Boxster duo to
make sure. Do these two cars represent an unspoken acknowledgment that
things have changed?
It’s pretty clear which one you’d take for a drive to the Nürburgring, and
which one you’d want when you got there. The Cayman carries 95 fewer
kilos unladen and two fewer bodies when loaded up. The engine is in a better
place, the car sits lower to the ground, and makes contact with it via a set of
very sticky Michelin Pilot Cup 2 tyres.
But what about these Snowdonia roads? Constantly changing in width
and surface co-efficient, they’re pool-table-smooth one minute and choppy
as a stormy sea the next. Could the more rounded, multi-talented 992-gener-
ation 911 Carrera S outshine the more one-dimensional GT4?
It is faster, after all, getting to 62mph in 3.5 seconds when equipped with
the PDK ’box, compared with 4.4sec for the manual-only GT4. And though
we’ve only got the rear-wheel-drive 992, rather than the C4S, the mass of that
rear-mounted engine pushing the rear axle into the ground puts its power
down cleanly. There’s little reason for anyone not living in Humboldt Glacier
Avenue to spend the extra £5k for the heavier, slower all-wheel-drive version.
The tape measure says the 911 is a touch wider than the Cayman, though
not by as much as you’d imagine looking out from the Carrera’s slick new
cabin. It feels like the 911 fills the whole road as you thread it through the
pinched sections that are only just broad enough to fit two cars across.
But the way the 911 responds to your inputs means, if it doesn’t exactly
shrink around you when you start pushing, it certainly sucks its gut in.
Twiddle the rotary controller on the steering wheel away from motor-
way-friendly Comfort and to Sport or Sport Plus and you’re instantly
reassured that the 911 still maintains its sports-car faculties.
The body control firms, as does the steering, which might not massage
your palms like a GT3’s but still offers the kind of reassuring feel we feared
was lost forever when the 911’s helm first went electric eight years ago.
This is the most refined, most GT-like 911 ever, the closest it’s come to the
conventional front-engined GTs that are its most obvious rivals. But it still
feels like a proper 911. Only better. Almost mid-engined in the way it scythes
into corners. Almost, but not quite. Allow the GT4 to illustrate. Here is a car
that serves up few of the modern Band-Aid chassis gadgets we’ve come to
expect, that doesn’t even have a Sport button, yet within metres of your first
meeting you suspect is going to beat even the Lamborghini hollow. ⊲
Is this the
day Cayman
beats 911?
PORSCHE 718 CAYMAN GT4
PORSCHE 911 CARRERA S
I N -
H O U S E
RIVALS
Sports Car Giant Test 2019
86 CARMAGAZINE.CO.UK | OCTOBER 2019
B Y CHRIS CHILTO N
