Porsche 718 Cayman S

Does added speed equal more appeal?

- Nathan Jacobs

THE NEW Porsche 718 Cayman is utterly brilliant. Apologies for killing the suspense, but I suspect that’s not going to be a particularly surprising verdict for anyone familiar with Porsche’s engineering expertise. No, the truly vexing question is, is this new Cayman a more desirable car than its predecessor? A highly subjective criterion, but an important one, as desirability is a key attribute when deciding on a sports car – no one buys one because they need one.

Let’s start with the case for the defence. The 718 Cayman may have lost two cylinders, but it’s gained a turbocharger and in ‘S’ guise that means 257kW/420Nm from the 2.5litre flat-four. This is 18kW/50Nm more than previous Cayman S’s 3.4litre flat-six, but were you to overlay the dyno graphs of the two engines you’d see the force-fed four-pot has masses more urge everywhere bar at the very top of the rev range.