Here it is folks, my first impressions of the 718 Cayman S PDK over a weekend test of more than 280 miles driven on a few of the Highland's best driving roads.
I am very grateful to OPC Aberdeen for granting me the opportunity for an extended test drive on local rural roads which I know extremely well, pending the arrival of my new 718 CS PDK next month. The demo car was lightly specced from a keen driver's standpoint , only having PDK, Sports Chrono with mode switch, and sports exhaust. Everything else pretty much the basic standard equipment.
Despite the foul weather in the north of Scotland coinciding with the test, I was able to gain enough experience on the new 718 CS PDK to form a meaningful first impression opinion on this substantially changed version of the Cayman range.
Following 4 years ownership and 30k miles in my previous Cayman R manual, I was not expecting to entirely overawed by this new evolution 4 pot turbo with PDK. I am a lifetime manual shift exponent, well practised in throttle blipping, heeling and toeing, and gear ratio sense that comes with more than 50 years of motorsport and track day driving. My passion for driving has now reached the point where the evolution of Porsche's now revised PDK gearbox mated with the latest Sports Chrono option, has now turned my head.
The first thing to deal with is the 2.5lt 4 pot turbo. Starting the car for the first time after 8 years of flat six Cayman's is an uncanny experience. In place of the usual Whrrrr! Bark! Vroom! of the flat six, you get a sort of Whrrr! Bark! Brrrrr Burble, Burble, Burble. At first you may think your Cayman flat six has a miss-fire on two cylinders such is the culture shock of the new sound. Blipping the throttle at rest does nothing to improve the impression of something being amiss here. Once underway, the engine settles down to a deep base note and actually sounds ok in a sort of Subaru-esque sort of way. Power delivery is smooth, torquey, and revvy with an impressive pull from 4000 to the red line at 7400rpm.
I didn't experience any noticeable turbo lag with the 718 CS. My daily driver is an Abarth 595 Competizione 180 which has a mighty big turbo blowing into it's 1.4lt 4 pot which will display dollops of turbo lag if you are lazy with the gearshift. Not so the 718 CS. I found driving in towns and villages extremely smooth and effortless with the PDK set in D and Sport selected on the mode switch. In this setting the gearbox behaved exactly as I would choose with a manual gearbox, selecting 3rd gear and holding it for the duration of 30mph zone driving. Exiting a roundabout in this PDK 3rd gear Sport configuration provided a smooth and instant pick up devoid of any lag that I could detect. In fact, being honest, I thought the 718 CS behaved better than the CR manual at exiting 30mph or 40mph roundabouts where the "emissions induced flat spot" left the CR 3.4lt feeling a bit breathless, unless downshifted to 2nd gear. One thing I would unreservedly recommend is the inclusion of the Sport Chrono and Mode Switch with the PDK option. The two go together extremely well. To spec one without the other is missing out in optimising the 718 driving experience in my opinion. The manual gearbox does not derive the same range of benefits with the Sport Chrono as the PDK does. When I eventually have my new car run-in, I shall comment on the 718 track day driving experience in more detail. I'm particularly impressed with the revised shift pattern of the new PDK on manual, where push forward downshifts, and pull back upshifts mimic a racing sequential gearbox. I'm going to love this on track days.
Unleashed on the open, flowing, deserted Highland roads the 718 CS simply flies! Let me be clear, this car is 911 Carrera S quick. I am saying this from knowledgeable experience having driven the new twin turbo 3.0 911 CS PDK earlier this year on the same roads. The sport mode switch settings of Sport and Sport Plus combined with PDK, really enhance the driving enjoyment on roads such as I am describing here. The 718 CS is a formidable cross country tool by any standards. I am absolutely convinced that when capable track day owners take their 718's to PCGB track days, they will not be the only ones to be hugely impressed. Not only does the 718 handle and steer better than previous Caymans, it has far superior brakes, and has substantially improved body control and composure when pressing on, even compared to the CR, and I never expected this from a mere Cayman S. Just a brief word on the steering, the new 10% quicker Porsche Turbo steering rack is an absolute peach. It makes the car noticeably pointier without feeling nervous. The steering feel of the road on the new EPS system does however fall way short of the sublime "fizz" feedback of the CR hydraulic steering. I used to joke that if you rolled over a 50 pence piece with the CR you could tell whether the coin was heads or tails. Exaggeration maybe, but not that far off of reality.
I'll pass on the 718 cabin comforts and technology improvements in this piece, as that topic has been covered extensively elsewhere. My impressions are, that the 718 CS is undoubtably setting a new higher benchmark for the Cayman model in spite of the motoring press expressing reservations on the engine noise. Given time, it will become accepted for the wonderful sports car it truly is. When I take delivery of my new 718 CS, it will not ever be a replacement for my superb CR, it'll rather be an enhancement of the Porsche Cayman driving experience for a different purpose in my life. Unlike some opinions expressed on the 718, I seek to embrace change where it shows improvement, and not hark backwards to things as they once were. If that luddite rationale were the norm, we would all still be driving large capacity n/a engines with 4 speed crash gearboxes requiring double-declutching skills. I rest my case.
My opinion is, this new car is here and now. The forthcoming 718 GTS model, when it appears, will be even stronger and better. Let's embrace it, accept it, and most of all, enjoy it.
Brian
I am very grateful to OPC Aberdeen for granting me the opportunity for an extended test drive on local rural roads which I know extremely well, pending the arrival of my new 718 CS PDK next month. The demo car was lightly specced from a keen driver's standpoint , only having PDK, Sports Chrono with mode switch, and sports exhaust. Everything else pretty much the basic standard equipment.
Despite the foul weather in the north of Scotland coinciding with the test, I was able to gain enough experience on the new 718 CS PDK to form a meaningful first impression opinion on this substantially changed version of the Cayman range.
Following 4 years ownership and 30k miles in my previous Cayman R manual, I was not expecting to entirely overawed by this new evolution 4 pot turbo with PDK. I am a lifetime manual shift exponent, well practised in throttle blipping, heeling and toeing, and gear ratio sense that comes with more than 50 years of motorsport and track day driving. My passion for driving has now reached the point where the evolution of Porsche's now revised PDK gearbox mated with the latest Sports Chrono option, has now turned my head.
The first thing to deal with is the 2.5lt 4 pot turbo. Starting the car for the first time after 8 years of flat six Cayman's is an uncanny experience. In place of the usual Whrrrr! Bark! Vroom! of the flat six, you get a sort of Whrrr! Bark! Brrrrr Burble, Burble, Burble. At first you may think your Cayman flat six has a miss-fire on two cylinders such is the culture shock of the new sound. Blipping the throttle at rest does nothing to improve the impression of something being amiss here. Once underway, the engine settles down to a deep base note and actually sounds ok in a sort of Subaru-esque sort of way. Power delivery is smooth, torquey, and revvy with an impressive pull from 4000 to the red line at 7400rpm.
I didn't experience any noticeable turbo lag with the 718 CS. My daily driver is an Abarth 595 Competizione 180 which has a mighty big turbo blowing into it's 1.4lt 4 pot which will display dollops of turbo lag if you are lazy with the gearshift. Not so the 718 CS. I found driving in towns and villages extremely smooth and effortless with the PDK set in D and Sport selected on the mode switch. In this setting the gearbox behaved exactly as I would choose with a manual gearbox, selecting 3rd gear and holding it for the duration of 30mph zone driving. Exiting a roundabout in this PDK 3rd gear Sport configuration provided a smooth and instant pick up devoid of any lag that I could detect. In fact, being honest, I thought the 718 CS behaved better than the CR manual at exiting 30mph or 40mph roundabouts where the "emissions induced flat spot" left the CR 3.4lt feeling a bit breathless, unless downshifted to 2nd gear. One thing I would unreservedly recommend is the inclusion of the Sport Chrono and Mode Switch with the PDK option. The two go together extremely well. To spec one without the other is missing out in optimising the 718 driving experience in my opinion. The manual gearbox does not derive the same range of benefits with the Sport Chrono as the PDK does. When I eventually have my new car run-in, I shall comment on the 718 track day driving experience in more detail. I'm particularly impressed with the revised shift pattern of the new PDK on manual, where push forward downshifts, and pull back upshifts mimic a racing sequential gearbox. I'm going to love this on track days.
Unleashed on the open, flowing, deserted Highland roads the 718 CS simply flies! Let me be clear, this car is 911 Carrera S quick. I am saying this from knowledgeable experience having driven the new twin turbo 3.0 911 CS PDK earlier this year on the same roads. The sport mode switch settings of Sport and Sport Plus combined with PDK, really enhance the driving enjoyment on roads such as I am describing here. The 718 CS is a formidable cross country tool by any standards. I am absolutely convinced that when capable track day owners take their 718's to PCGB track days, they will not be the only ones to be hugely impressed. Not only does the 718 handle and steer better than previous Caymans, it has far superior brakes, and has substantially improved body control and composure when pressing on, even compared to the CR, and I never expected this from a mere Cayman S. Just a brief word on the steering, the new 10% quicker Porsche Turbo steering rack is an absolute peach. It makes the car noticeably pointier without feeling nervous. The steering feel of the road on the new EPS system does however fall way short of the sublime "fizz" feedback of the CR hydraulic steering. I used to joke that if you rolled over a 50 pence piece with the CR you could tell whether the coin was heads or tails. Exaggeration maybe, but not that far off of reality.
I'll pass on the 718 cabin comforts and technology improvements in this piece, as that topic has been covered extensively elsewhere. My impressions are, that the 718 CS is undoubtably setting a new higher benchmark for the Cayman model in spite of the motoring press expressing reservations on the engine noise. Given time, it will become accepted for the wonderful sports car it truly is. When I take delivery of my new 718 CS, it will not ever be a replacement for my superb CR, it'll rather be an enhancement of the Porsche Cayman driving experience for a different purpose in my life. Unlike some opinions expressed on the 718, I seek to embrace change where it shows improvement, and not hark backwards to things as they once were. If that luddite rationale were the norm, we would all still be driving large capacity n/a engines with 4 speed crash gearboxes requiring double-declutching skills. I rest my case.
My opinion is, this new car is here and now. The forthcoming 718 GTS model, when it appears, will be even stronger and better. Let's embrace it, accept it, and most of all, enjoy it.
Brian
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