Please excuse the hyperbole, but this might be the perfect car. That distinction comes with an asterisk. It’s the perfect car if you don’t need 4 seats or need to go off-roading. Thus, it is the perfect sports car.

Going into this review I knew I would be tough on this car. I owned a 2.5L 718 Cayman GTS for a few years. The 2.5 turbo flat-four GTS was unfairly judged for its departure from the beloved NA Flat 6, and I will be one of the few to champion that engine as being brilliant. It’s effective, punchy, and has torque fit for a bulldozer. I am also aware that I love Porsches, which meant that I would keep my guard up for this review.

So we end up with a more expensive version of the already great 2.5L GTS that seems like it could be the cynical play to get people into a new car once their lease is up. Look, I’m really trying here, but my word, it’s so rare for Porsche to miss.

This car is an objective hit.

To me, the perfect sports car has to always be the right car for the situation. We are lucky to live in a golden age of cars where a single car is good at being a lot of things to a lot of people. The Cayman GTS 4.0 is basically the correct car all the time. Yes it’s fantastic in the canyons or on a spirited drive, perfect in the way that it rewards good driving and instructs you away from the bad.

It’s also somehow phenomenal as a daily. It’s such an easy car around town and even in traffic. The NVH is well controlled , the shifter, clutch, and throttle are calibrated perfectly to make gear changes seamless, snappy, and satisfying.. The suspension is so well judged that even on the roughest LA roads this contends with the bumps better than most cars.

Big grocery haul? I took the car to Costco and thought I might be pushing it, but the trunk, frunk and hatch space over the engine left me with space to spare. Road trip? The cabin is so refined and luxurious enough to make it a pleasant place to spend time in, and it even gets decent fuel economy on the highway. The Bose sound system pairs nicely with the cabin, and the low NVH allows you to actually enjoy it.

Let’s take a second to talk about the new engine. It’s a 4.0L naturally aspirated Flat 6 that revs to 7800 rpm, makes 394 horsepower and 317 lb-ft of torque. Yes the gearing is long, as it always is on the newest manual Porsches, but with the wide power band you don’t need to worry about shifting out of the sweet spot as you did on the 981 GT4, for example. With that said, my one little gripe is that without a fun backroad or a good on-ramp, you will rarely get to hear or experience the full range of this engine. If you do wind it up, you will be rewarded with quite a lot of induction sound in the cabin, especially when contrasted with the quiet exhaust, likely due to the European-mandated particulate filter. Obviously this can be easily remedied, but I’m actually a fan of noise for me and no one else.

Okay let’s get down to some of the facts that you drivers may be interested in.

Steering: Porsche does make some of the better feeling EPAS, and this car’s system is no exception. On-center steering has feel, and weighs up nicely. The stock Pirelli PZero tires are perhaps a bit of the weakness here, solid on turn-in but doughy in the mid-corner. The car can be specced with my preferred Michelin Pilot Sport 4S which improve this substantially at the cost of turn-in.

Chassis: The Cayman has always been one of the best in the business, so much so that it scares Porsche. People ask if they should get a 911 or a Cayman, and the answer is technically both, but the objectively superior chassis is the Cayman, even with its more humble rear strut-based hardware. The 911 will teach you how to drive a 911, the Cayman will teach you how to drive anything.

Suspension: Porsche has this magic ability to find a sweet spot with the suspension. Everyone thinks they want a racecar, but they don’t. They want a car that is fast and confident that isn’t actually miserable to live with. This suspension and tuning provides exactly that. Yes there’s a bit of a compromise as on some bigger bumps the rear suspension can have a bit of trouble catching up, perhaps a limitation of the strut design. It’s one of the least compromised systems considering how much it can do well. The suspension loads up so wonderfully, and works in tandem with the chassis to provide you all the information you need to understand the car immediately.

Brakes: This car had steel brakes, they are honestly great. Nice brake feel, never faded, always confident.

Aero: Parking lot wing is cute.

Looks: I have always thought the 718 was the best looking variant of the Cayman, and the slight revisions the 4.0 GTS gets to the front and rear are welcome. I especially dig the new oval exhausts and their placement. Aggressive in a classy way. Other than that, the Cayman is a handsome car in my eyes. For being a mid-engined car with borderline supercar performance, it always looks like more of a sports car to me. So if you are after something that will turn heads, this might not deliver. For me, that only makes the car better.

Price: This car was relatively barebones on options. The GTS has historically been the “sweet spot” in that it costs less than a fully loaded S, and it includes some GTS specific options like black wheels and a slightly lower ride height. This press spec almost seems like a subversive jab at the current PTS obsession. It’s a standard color, Racing Yellow, and it doesn’t even have the leather dash, but the fact that it’s a GTS means that all the things that actually matter and relate to the driving experience are there. At $95,000 as tested, it’s by no means cheap, but the car as an experience easily justifies that. This easily feels like a $120,000 experience to me, so that makes this spartan spec quite the bargain in my eyes. This is likely how I would go for it, were I to buy one, as none of the available options would enhance the driving experience.

Cons: Long gears make it tough to hear engine music around town, no front axle lift. That’s it, this car is the perfect sports car. I swear I’m not a Porsche simp.

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