Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 review

Of course it’s brilliant. The GT4’s chassis hasn’t changed too much on before – Porsche isn’t mad – and the changes that have been made involve additional knowledge borrowed from the 911 GT3. Which is like borrowing your piano-playing technique from Elton John.

The steering is sublime, the gearshift in the manual is basically perfect, the brakes progressive even in dreadful conditions... every control has been developed by the nerdiest of driving nerds to be as satisfying and communicative as possible. If you’re buying a GT4 over anything else at this sort of money, you’ll care about this sort of stuff.

Sounds predictably excellent…

What’s actually most impressive is how simple this thing is to drive. It looks hard as nails and feels laser-focused in its intentions, yet it rides amiably in town, cruises reasonably quietly on a motorway and even does decent fuel economy numbers (high 20s mpg if you’re not being immature, or even better in the PDK with its extra ratio). It looks every inch a track special, but it could feasibly be your only road car. Porsche is capable of witchcraft.

It gets better the harder you drive it, naturally. And the GT4 actively encourages such behaviour, especially on track. With information spilling out of every control – and about the friendliest, most flattering chassis at any price beneath you – this is a car that fills you with confidence quickly. It forgives mistakes without clumsily stemming your flow, and rewards commitment like few other cars on sale. You want to rise to its level, desperate to match its talent levels by dragging up your own.

How’s the engine?

Most of the 718 GT4 is business as usual, then, save for one area. Noise. There’s no escaping it: this car doesn’t sound as good as before. It’s no longer as high-pitched or highly strung, and there’s little of the old car’s intensity as you home in on 8,000rpm. Drive this car in isolation and you won’t be offended – its engine still chunters at idle and is atmospheric on the throttle among a sea of turbocharged rivals – but it can’t help but feel a little neutered by modern emissions regulations if you’ve experienced any flat-six Cayman before it.

A few weeks of acclimatising to the new car would be enough to get over yourself if you bought the 718 after driving the old car though, and you’d be able to just revel in how damn good every other element is.

Well, except for the gearing, which still sees first as the only ratio you can legally chase the redline in on UK roads. But the previous, ‘perfect’ GT4 suffered the same, and we’ve long since made our peace with it…

Ah yes. Gears. Which ‘box should I go for?

An excellent question, and not a bad position to find yourself in if this is a question you’re genuinely pondering. The seven-speed PDK is a great gearbox with slightly shorter ratios than the manual and an ability to sit 500rpm lower on the motorway. But when has a Porsche GT car ever been a motorway cruiser? Get the six-speed manual. There’s a real weight to the clutch and the lever responds best to a firm push or pull at each change. The manual is so much more involving and rewarding.

Anything else I need to know?

There’s a refreshing lack of driving modes in the GT4. You've only a few button presses on offer when you clamber inside, to activate the sports exhaust, auto rev-matching (in the manual, obvs), a tougher suspension mode, and to deactivate the ESP or traction control. Think of them like difficulty levels on a driving sim: use the car’s heel’n’toe shifts to try and inform your own, and loosen the electronic shackles when you’ve spent some time on track and you're feeling up to it. The car is nicely firm in its standard damper setting and we’d be surprised if you ever felt the need to sharpen it up on road, meanwhile.