Showroom

CAYMAN 981 3.4 S REVIEW

In an entirely unsurprising development, the new Cayman turns out to be brilliant to drive. Who'd have thunk it? Keep bearing that in mind as you read what follows. The new Cayman, based, of course, on the same underpinnings as the Boxster, now has more grip, more power, a stiffer chassis and less weight. It's 11 seconds faster around the Nürburgring.

But dynamics are not where the biggest advances have been made. Let's use the engine we're testing as a weathervane for the whole car: the 3.4-litre flat-six in the Cayman S has 321bhp, a 5bhp rise, contributing to a modest 0.2secs reduction in the 0-62mph time and a single mph rise in top speed.

Small improvements, yes? Now look at the efficiency gains. They're massive: a whacking 33g/km CO2 reduction, an economy boost of 4.4mpg. Now tell me where you think Porsche has been focusing its engine-development resources.

You can expand this theory out to the whole car. The cabin is more habitable than ever, visibility is a treat, there's an extra 15 litres of luggage volume (425 litres in total) and it'll go 450 miles without refuelling. It's quiet, comfortable, smooth and borderline luxurious, plus it rides beautifully.

This is all good news if you're buying a Cayman to live with and drive every day. A chap called Hans-Jürgen Wöhler, the product director of both the Cayman and the Boxster, says Porsche wants to "expand the range of all possible uses". Reading between the lines, that meansthey want to sell more cars to a more mainstream audience. Uh-oh.

The Cayman, when it arrived in 2005, was a bastardised, turreted Boxster and a difficult sell: dismissed by the narrow-minded as the coupe for those who couldn't afford a 911, and challenged because it bucked the usual trend by being a coupe that was more costly than its convertible cousin.

Basically, it succeeded because it was brilliant to drive and sold strongly enough that Porsche hasn't done anything to rock the boat this time round. The rivals talked about are the Mercedes-Benz SLK, Audi TT and BMW Z4 - all of which are sports cars in a looser sense of the word. You get the feeling Porsche isn't overreaching itself.

Still, let's not forget it's brilliant to drive. You may be able to sense the imminent arrival of a caveat, and, yes, one will be along shortly, but in the meantime, let's consider the Cayman. It's lighter. About 30kg lighter on average, chiefly thanks to the widespread use of aluminium in the bodywork. It doesn't look lighter, though, does it? The surfacing, especially of those sculpted flanks, has more depth and solidity to it now, and overall this one is, well... muscular.

The back end of the first Cayman was unresolved, but now there's something deeply appealing about the interaction between the rear arch and the tailgate, and the integration of the spoiler and the rear lights. The front end's less noteworthy, although, when you look out from inside, there's a nice crease line running over the front arches that you otherwise don't notice. In the flesh, it's curt and cute and a great bit of work.

Same inside. OK, the console and dash template is almost identical to the 911's, which itself has much in common with the Panamera and Cayenne, so think generic Porsche, but there's simply nothing to fault. And the quality... Honestly, as a static object, the base Cayman, at £39,694, looks terrific value. You sit where you need to, on great seats, with all controls logically arrayed. Just don't go overboard on the options. Porsche seems proud of the fact the Cayman is now available with keyless entry, a stadium-spec Burmester hi-fi and radar cruise control, and I guess if you're competing with more cosseting rivals, you have to offer such things. Whether you need them is up to you.

There are some boxes you do need to tick, though. Sport Chrono is one; sports exhaust is the other. Together, they add £2,557. Like I said, go easy on the options, or you'll be sitting in a dealership deciding which kidney you need to part with to own the Cayman of your dreams. The big choice for most people will be PDK or no PDK. Again, your choice. The £1,922 double-clutcher is good, smarter now than ever, has a coasting function and won't change up mid-drift. Seriously, it says that in the bumf. Porsche also commented that, being an auto, it allows you to drink your coffee in heavy traffic.

But if you are a driver, by which I mean someone who isn't just fussed about what the Caymansays about them as they mooch up the rush-hour M4, sipping a skinny latte, then have the manual. It's a sweet six-speeder, and - provided you've ticked the Sport Chrono box - blips the revs for you on downchanges. You can't outwit it. I tried: driving idly along in sixth, then cramming it into third as fast as possible, only to be rewarded with a perfect downshift, accompanied by an addictive zap of revs.

But mated to which engine? The 2.7 is the more changed. It used to be a 2.9, after all. The reduced capacity has resulted in an engine that's more powerful and torquey, as well as cleaner and more efficient, natch. 271bhp from 2,706cc means it's the first Cayman to boast over 100bhp per litre, and it's a joy to listen to as it climbs its way across the rev range. You get plenty of time to listen to it, too, because it just ain't as punchy as you'd expect. In fact, below 4,000rpm, where the VarioCam variable-valve-timing system really gets its freak on, the 2.7 is a tad sluggish. Just a tad, you understand, and it's only worthy of mention, because we're getting so used to the slug of low-rev oomph that only a turbocharger can deliver. Put it this way: get caught out in the 2.7, and you'll be easy meat for a Focus ST.

It never quite feels 5.7-to-62mph fast, but you won't mind, because your ears will be smiling. Even without a sports exhaust, this flat-six sounds wonderful; with one, it's close to divine. It yowls and rasps and, on the overrun, it sounds like a Crimean battle re-enactment scene heard from two hills away. So what if it makes more noise than forward progress?

But, if push came to shove and we had the spare cash, we'd be seeking out the extra £9,089 needed for the S. No need to fear hot hatches now. Yes, it's naturally aspirated, but more capacity means more torques, and so more grunt. And we have that manual gearbox to row around. It's a lovely pairing.

We're on some truly excellent roads in southern Portugal, and the Cayman is showing just what benefits its mid-engined layout brings. Consider the dual (alright, dull) matters of stiffness and weight distribution.

Were a giant pair of hands to grab the coupe by both ends and attempt to twist it, a force of 40,000Nm would only move it by a single degree. The same movement can be accomplished in the Boxster with a force of just 17,000Nm, and we reckon that's plenty stiff. The Cayman, now 40 per cent stiffer than before, is more rigid than a carbon-tubbed Lambo Aventador, in fact. It also has its weight more evenly distributed - 46 per cent on the front axle, 54 on the rear (the figure for a 911 C2 is 39:61) - plus the positioning of the engine within the wheelbase means the car is inherently more agile.

The Cayman scoots into corners, and, if it happens to be a long one, you can have a play with the throttle, feel what it does to the car's trajectory and balance. This is all good fun stuff. The stability control is undetectable, the limits are very high, and yet you don't have to visit them to really get something out of the Cayman.

And you can always, always, get on the power earlier than you think possible. This is because you also ticked the £890 box marked PTV (Porsche Torque Vectoring). It consists of a mechanical rear differential combined with electronic control of the rear brakes. The latter helps agility on the way into corners; the former deals with your escape from them. I kept hitting the throttle earlier and earlier in corners, exiting them with an increasing sense of disbelief at what the Cayman was capable of.

As I found out later at the Portimão circuit, the Cayman is supremely neutral at the limit, slipping gently between understeer and oversteer. And the suspension is staggering. All the cars had PASM, Porsche's active suspension system, with two damper settings. In normal, it's amazingly supple, almost Jaguar-ish, soft at the back, yet still wonderfully well controlled (a result of the car only weighing 1,320kg); in Sport mode, the ride never becomes harsh, but exhibits rock-solid control. Rock-solid. You hit a bump, and before your brain has registered it, the car has moved on and you're left questioning whether the bump actually existed in the first place.

And here we come to the crux of the matter: the Cayman controls the amount of information you have. The chassis delivers all you could want, but the steering, well, there's this bit in the press pack where it says "negative or unnecessary noise is filtered out". But that unfiltered steering was in perfect harmony with the chassis in the old car - both were constant streams of information. Here, the flow of one has been reduced.

Yes, the Cayman, like the new 991 911, has electro-mechanical steering, and, as with the 911, we're going to criticise it. Not much, though, as compared to its bigger brother, the extra nose weight seems to have reduced numbness a little. And, as far as weighting, accuracy and consistency go, it's very good. But when you drove along a straight road in the old car, the wheel fidgeted and let you know what was going on. Now it's calm and quiet, and while many might prefer that, some will agree that a bit of fizz and sparkle has gone missing.

The new Cayman is an improvement in almost every area, then. I count myself a lover of hardcore cars, but I'd have new over old Cayman every time. Yes, it feels a fraction more formulaic than before, more rounded and accommodating, but, for driver appeal, it blows everything this side of a Lotus Exige into the weeds at the side of your favourite B-road. Yes, it can come across as a bit ‘painting by numbers', but isn't that how Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?