What’s that? How’d we get a hold of one of these? And how’d we get on track? Don’t worry about it!

So let’s start with the where: Rudskogen Motorsenter in Norway.

It’s a track nestled in what are either large hills or tiny mountains. 7 left and 7 right hand turns across a 3.254 km (2.022 mi) long track. It’s got a long-ish straight, sweepers, esses, elevation changes, and a wonderful hairpin where you enter downhill and exit uphill. It’s enormous fun, with a great flow, and a lot of 3-4th gear technical twisties.

And the how: they had these for rent.

After a quick intro and three lead-follow laps, you’re let loose on your own with these not-100%-stock base Caymans “against” 9 other lunatics. The cars are all running Continental SpotContact 7’s, and had a cage and buckets. The pads and fluid were also swapped to handled track abuse. There was no carpeting, leather, or sound deadening, no infotainment system, but hey there was still AC! Luxury living! The powertrain was left stock.

With that boring crap cleared up, let’s dig into this th-

Hey isn’t that the 4-cylinder?

Well, yeah. It’s a 2.0L flat fou-

Booooo

What, are you going to tell me it should be a fl-

A flat six, yes. And also, NOT a 911.

I promise you that doesn’t matter as much as you think.

It’s gonna sound like shit! And the rev-

Shush, it revs past 7. Look, there’s a common consensus amongst the car community that the turbo flat four Cayman isn’t the car to bu-

FAKE POSER PORSCHE!

SHUT IT.

Look, almost everyone who thinks they have an opinion about Porsche and a Rennlist forum account will tell you the same shit: “The 718 is ok and handles better, but buy the older flat six”. And while that might hold true if you’re looking for a fun road car experience, truthfully you won’t care once you’re on track. The biggest fault this car has is that flat four. It’s a great engine, but it’s also a bit dull. The FA20 and 24 single turbo Subaru flat fours make more noise and emit more emotion, meanwhile the older EJ25 unit beats the base Porsche. 2.5L vs 2.0L, 310 vs 300hp, and a far more visceral experience as it pulls to its lower redline. But what it lacks in character, it makes up for by just fucking working.

During the track sessions, that car didn’t overheat, it didn’t cut timing or boost, it didn’t have oil temperature or sloshing issues, and it didn’t spin a rod bearing for the funnies. Unlike even the most hardcore STI, the S209, this flat four buried deep in the midship of a Cayman is actually a glutton for track punishment. It lives up to the Porsche way of “drive it to track, beat the life out of it, then drive it home”. And while I didn’t drive it on the road, you can feel that the car just looks back at you and goes “hmm yes more of this please” after an hour of use and abuse.

BUT TH-

Shhhhhutthefuckup. When you’re on track, you don’t care about how it sounds. If you have enough time or mental capacity to sit there ponder the intricacies of your exhaust note, you’re not driving fast enough. When you power out of a turn, the noise still builds with anger (and turbo sounds), mixing in transmission whine from the PDK. It’s not inspiring, but it’s fairly racy and-

Wait, it’s a PDK? Too lazy to shift your ow-

Fucking fight me. You modern car enthusiasts are never satisfied with cars you won’t even buy, aren’t you? And I’ll get to the PDK in a bit. Anyways, unlike the even more rev happy flax six, this turbo four makes more power and torque, and does far sooner in the rev range. So when you leave a turn, you can be in boost at 3000 rpm and ready to ride all 300 hp to 7500rpm.

And while that’s a nice chunk of the tach for you to play with, 300 horsepower isn’t all that much. Especially for a mid engined Porsche.

Exactly! You could buy a C8 Corvet-

And you’ll find that the steering and pedals are more numb, the paddles feel cheap, and the car isn’t nearly as happy around a corner. You also don’t need to deal with the trail of buttons and that stupid square wheel when driving on the road. It’ll be faster, 495 hp, 2.8s 0-60 with the z51 package, carbon seats, v8 noise, etc etc. But on a tight track or windy road, that Cayman will make the vette look stupid. And I really enjoyed that z51 c8.

Alright, now that’s a lot of bitching and excuses to explain why I don’t care that it doesn’t have an na flat six. So, the rest of the car?

Cope. Seethe.

Continuing onwards… the Porsche PDK. You know what this is, I know what this is, and yes it’s great. The dual clutch is instant, paddles feel good, makes a nice noise, a funny little punch, and manual mode doesn’t treat you like an idiot and over ride your demands. Unless that demand is a blown motor trying to enter 1st at 100 mph, but like… I’m assuming that natural selection has taken its course before the Porsche comes into play. Compared to BMW’s DCT, it has some theater and doesn’t drive like someone learning to drive stick at low speeds (thank you M4). And compared to the c8, it hits hard, fast, and the paddles don’t feel weird (cheap). There’s a reason this gearbox tech is the benchmark.

It handles like an extension of yourself, like a sci-fi mech-suit built to be nimble and light. It’s classic Porsche responses with a bit of modern dullness sprinkled in. Steering is electric vs hydraulics… look it’s not a race car, and unless you want a back to back comparison vs the last gen cayman, you’re just gonna have to take my word for it: it’s so good it doesn’t really matter. You feel what the front wants, you feel it load up under breaking, feel it get light under up-hill corner exits as the car naturally pushes. The rear moves and talks; its a car that treats you like it’s road-therapist. Nothing will go unnoticed except for maybe some rough pavement surface. It does exactly as you ask. It can rotate on turn it, be as precise as a robot wielding a scalpel, and with pin-point accuracy hit an apex. Or you can give it throttle too early and feel stability control intervene only after the car lets you know the ass has started to step out. It leaves the ability for driver error to go punished, letting you know that the laws of physics are always uncaring to stupidity.

What else? Brakes? They stop and don’t fade much. Look it’s a Porsche from 2018. Like that 997 turbo we reviewed in our early days, I think the best way to sum it up is this: it’s a Modern Porsche, of course it’s good. Of course it works well on track. In fact, it works fucking amazing on track. Expect something else?

Kinda yeah.

Why? Because it’s new? Because it’s a base, automatic 718 with a turbo 4? Hell at 3000lb you feel the lack of weight compared to most other cars in its price range. Maybe on the road there’s a little more to bitch about. But on track? That was a solid 8 or 9 out of 10 experience (I say having driven one other car on track that wasn’t the Valkyrie). It’s a Porsche on a good race track, do I really need to explain that further?