Porsche 718 Cayman S

It’s long been the sweet-spot in porsche’s model line-up, but has turbocharging affected the cayman’s appeal?

THE BANGING SOUND  you can hear is one more nail being hammered into the coffin of natural aspiration. in line with most of the rest of the automotive industry, porsche is downsizing and turbocharging its engines, and hot on the heels of the 911 and Boxster, the cayman is the latest model in porsche’s line-up to junk an atmospheric motor for a blown one. the 718 cayman S uses the same four-cylinder, single-turbo unit that powers the recent 718 Boxster S, replacing the free-revving flat-six that to our simple and regressive minds just didn’t need replacing.

The new engine certainly hasn’t ruined the Boxster S, but when we sampled it we reckoned enough had been lost from the driving experience that it should be downgraded from a five-star car to a four-and-a-half-star one. We’ve been worried about the new cayman ever since.

The 2.5-litre flat-four develops 350hp and 420nm of torque, which means the latest cayman S is faster than ever. equipped with a six-speed manual gearbox it’ll reach 100km/h from a standstill in 4.6 seconds (4.2 seconds using a pdK ’box and Launch control) and top out at 285km/h, which is a useful tick in the ‘pros’ column for the turbo engine.