Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS: Best Sports Car EVER? | Catchpole on Carfection

[Music] strange feeling of deja vu anyway we're here in portugal the estoril circuit at the end of the gt4 rs launch which is a bit of a problem because i haven't actually driven the car yet and it's a launch where they've been telling people that this is a car for circuit driving for quick sunday morning blasts this is not a car for driving thousands of miles in which could be a bit of an issue because we're gonna drive this car one and a half thousand miles back to stuttgart in germany now this is the first time i've seen gt4s in the metal and carbon and it is a really good looking thing there's some details which i've already seen which i'm particularly enjoying i love the little grilles and the lights there this larger front splitter down here but what i really like is on the front arches around here which i hadn't really picked up in photos somehow these slashes at the top which are really reminiscent of a 911 gt1 they've had work with the ducts and the bonnet here for cooling the brakes so the air goes in there comes out and it helps with the exit out here down the side this has got the vice hack pack on it so we've also got magnesium wheels which are extra on top of the vice hack package but save two and a half kilos super cool love magnesium wheels then these extra sort of bits to help funnel the air in here looking forward to hearing how it sounds i love the fact that for the first time you can actually see the engine through that rear window other little things as well porsche scripts you'd normally have on an rs sort of along the rear wing here but it would be a bit awkward with the swan necks here so they've got it actually sort of within the glass there on the rear screen overall super cool i love it in the silver as well reminiscent of those gt3 cup cars anyway it's enough chatting time to get on the road with the 911 gt3's amazing 4 litre naturally aspirated flat 6 spun through 180 degrees and squeezed into the cayman's sublime mid-engine chassis this is a car that promises to be pretty special but can it live up to the hype will it be too track biased to rensport for the road despite starting at 108 000 pounds will it still feel somehow lesser compared to its rear engine sibling we've got two and a half days to find out and although we need to traverse a big chunk of western europe from lisbon to stuttgart in the process we'll still hopefully take in some interesting roads along the way as it was already evening when we left estoril i decided to get some motorway miles under the cup twos two four five thirty five zr20s at the front two nine five thirty zr20s at the rear in case you're interested and head for spain [Music] we arrived in the pretty university city of salamanca late at night and then we left again early in the morning all of this time saving however meant a few hours later i could get a little off the beaten track as we headed west through northern spain it's fun just popping off the motorway occasionally and coming onto some of these sort of side roads because i've always been sort of fascinated by the middle bit of spain because we always tend to stick to the the edges really either pyrenees or sort of the coastline barcelona or and my sort of albaria that sort of area down there and there's sort of nothing in the middle but it's also really rather beautiful somehow and you get these incredible just long straight empty roads it's amazing the engine in this feels a bit like well it's sort of if you've ever had a friend that's moved abroad and then a year later you speak to them and they've sort of picked up bits of the accent from being abroad it's a little bit like that i think it's familiar but just a little bit different in character it is basically exactly the same as before so we've got 500 horsepower so 493 brake horsepower 332 pounds foot of torque and your same four liter naturally aspirated flat six and absolutely glorious the 10 brake horsepower deficit compared to a 992 is apparently just because of the slightly longer exhausts required because the engine is further forward and there is a touch more back pressure as a result however at 1 415 kilos the cayman counters this with a marginal 20 kilo advantage over a pdk gt3 meaning porsche lists the power to weight ratios of the two cars as identical the interior of the gt4 rs is worth talking about briefly too with its combination of analog and digital dials and touch screen and physical buttons it feels like the perfect ergonomic blend it's nice because this is apparently the first time that a porsche has had this sort of race text or alchemy charity of me on the dash which makes total sense because it's obviously anti-glare and it just adds a nicer softness to the whole cab it makes it feel special also quite warm in here which is nice actually as we've got a long straight piece of road and there is absolutely nobody around i think i'm going to stop to do a quick acceleration run not normally a big one for doing straight up acceleration runs but i think this could be pretty special actually so left foot on the brake pdk sports yeah cntc off that all right here we go [Music] [Music] 3.2 seconds not 62 miles an hour in 3.4 but the naught 60 3.2 which for people of my generation means a lot because that is the mclaren f1s naught to 60 mile an hour time that was good [Music] i know some electric cars might be quicker but that was an exciting naught to 60. right time to cover a bit more ground and go and find a few twistier roads i think now normally i would just head to the perfect porsche playground of the pyrenees but at this time of year well it's a little tricky lightly treaded track tires and snow do not a good pairing make luckily just to the west of the mountains there is a road i've wanted to visit for a while and which is arguably even more appropriate for this naturally aspirated 718 cayman [Music] this road has literally got this car's name on it [Music] wow look at that view [Music] i was starting to wonder whether we made the right decision to drive all this way across europe but the chance to drive this piece of road in this car is absolutely worth it [Music] what a piece of road what a car this is fun with very much a capital l instantly the rs felt at home being driven hard and i felt comfortable with it with both the esc and tc turned off it felt so predictable and playful doing that porsche thing of feeling like it's gripping even when it's slipping i've been leaving the chasm the adaptive dampers just in their normal setting perfect on this road in my setting i have tried them in the firmware setting and actually is quite nice in some ways because you get a bit more sort of that race car feel to be honest yeah the normal setting is his best hairpins it's just so playful this car the chassis is so on your side they've got just a quarter of a degree more camera in the rear apparently this has got a mechanical slip diff it's still got ptv fire braking which i'm always a bit worried about because you can't turn it off but people you can't really feel it either compared to a non-rs cayman gt4 this has a six millimeter wider track at the front and an eight millimeter wider track at the rear it has helper springs ball joints all round and the tracking camber and anti-roll bars can all be individually adjusted it is amazing it's so loud in here we're just so intoxicated i felt like the right thing to do to put the harnesses on for this piece of road i know some people think that harnesses in a road car is stupid but i love that feeling of just being sort of properly locked into the seat particularly as good as this the beautiful supportive but surprisingly comfortable carbon 918 style buckets are standard on the rs by the way like all the best roads we've got really good sidelines on here it's narrow which keeps it really interesting [Music] it's a very perineum sort of road and i love it because it is a bit bumpy it is a bit raw this road perfect to show off this car's talent as you can probably tell the road also laid on a variety of weather just to test the car that little bit more personally i loved it in the wet it was stable tactile and controllable even when it was sliding i don't really need to say very much i mean you can hear can't you you can see by the smile on my face you just need to listen to that engine i know this hasn't got the double wishbone front suspension rear wheel steering of the latest 992 gt3 but am i missing them no not a bit yes i love the 911 i love that rear engine balance but the friendliness of this the size of this it just feels like a smaller car it is a smaller car and the short gearing the shortest gearing ever fitted to a gt department car this is going to be up there with the best gt cars ever the best sports cars ever [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you join me for breakfast in the pit lane of another sucker that i'm not going to drive because it's closed today um so just before you get your hopes up um it's the charade circuit near clermont front which somewhere i have always wanted to visit and it is absolutely beautiful it's amazing sort of in this sort of dell on this hillside up here and it's known as the sort of known as a little nurburgring potentially even twister even faster actually in places but i want to stop here partly because as i say this is a little nurburgring so it gives me an opportunity to mention the nurburgring lap time of this which is seven minutes four seconds uh 0.511 to be accurate that's the old lap the slightly shorter lap but it's one that we can actually sort of relate to a mighty impressive time 23.6 seconds quicker than a standard cayman gt4 some of that's obviously down to the cup to our rubber that this was on but nonetheless mighty impressive for a cayman i think you will agree also in here because obviously we're at a circuit just a couple of things roll cage in there vice hack pack this has means that is in titanium saving six kilos and it's just cool because it's titanium the other thing is going into the front of the car these are linseed otherwise known as flaxseed and something i thought was quite interesting is that on the club sports or the racing version of this they've used an awful lot of what's known as nfc or natural fiber composite using flax in it and i thought well that would be really cool to use it on this it is just a tiny bit heavier but it's kind of negligible and i thought for all the sort of environmental reasons that it's good that would be lovely to have it on this however there is a reason they haven't used it and it's because the finish of it isn't actually quite as good as this it's just it's a bit rough and it doesn't matter for a race car where you slap a livery on it and nobody's looking that closely anyway but they thought for customers they certainly still wouldn't be quite ready for that sort of finish on their road cars hopefully in the future they can get it well as good as this lovely carbon fiber and then all this front end could be made from nfc anyway that's enough talking um i will finish my panna rosa and then we've got another road to visit after all that enthusiasm the day before i decided to have a good think about what i didn't like about the gt4 rs and after a little while i lighted up on the fact that the larger rear wing obstructs the view in the rear view mirror that was pretty much it oh and i did wonder how much the reduction in unsprung mass from the costly carbon brakes and mag wheels on this particular car might be helping perhaps the ride is terrible if you don't spend the tens of thousands of pounds extra i somehow doubt it [Music] the road we're going to today or going fire today is a little bit around but it does have the advantage that's taking us off the auto route at france it's easy to forget because it's easy just to go through france on the auto page and miss out on all these amazing d-roads that just crossed across the country [Music] since yesterday i've been thinking obviously a lot about that drive up on the 718 in spain and one of the things i've been thinking about is the gearbox because i was wondering well you know would it have been better with a manual gearbox now this apparently couldn't have a manual gearbox because the one from the gt3 is too long it just packaging-wise wouldn't have worked if they put the one from the gt4 in that wouldn't have really worked either because it couldn't take 9000 rpm and it's not very easy to change the ratio so it looks like we've been stuck with those tall ratios whereas this is obviously fantastic because it's got these short ratios in this pdk box [Music] just to give you some idea how much shorter the ratios are here's a quick comparison in a gt4 with a manual transmission in second gear at 8 000 rpm you would be doing 83 miles an hour in a gt4 with pdk you would be doing 77 miles an hour now in this new rs in second gear at 9000 rpm you're doing just 72 miles an hour that stat alone would seem to justify the paddle shift although in many ways paddle shift seems a misnomer in this car i barely use the paddles in this rs which is strange but i've not always migrated to using a lever when i've had the chance but this one feels really good kind of it's just because it feels so like the millennium shifting with that alcantara and just the shape of it and everything the short and stubby throw on it feels perfect it really does add another layer of engagement i mean these have been the best models because they're pretty smart and dinky although where they actually work is quite nice but it's not very much cool this just feels ace it really does let you live out those touring car or rally car sequential shift fantasies no you don't have the three pedal dance but there is still the extra little bit of thought required when you take your hand from the wheel and yet it is still easier to reach out for that 9000 rpm redline which has to be a good thing [Music] [Applause] those chips [Music] having got the loud exhaust on you just don't need it most of the time get all the different noises those throttle bodies wow [Music] right time to go and find our road and the road is the d-981 well in for a penny in for a pound you know if you're going to do one road named after a holster or cayman then why not another all right the other way around she came first rodent car pretty sure it was the road now obviously this is the fact that 982 it's called the 718 for the greatest historical and marketing reasons but it's 902. the 981 though is where this started because there is a 981 gt4 rs but it's just a prototype you see when they did the gt4 wolfgang hats who was headed porsche r d at the time said you must try and put the gt3 engine in but it wouldn't fit because it was a an oil tank association with a dry sump system that just it wouldn't fit in around the body of white so they they would have taken a huge amount of re-engineering for production but they did make a prototype for his birthday and it was so much fun that's what made them think we must put it in production for the next time around so when they re-engineered the gt3 engine they re-engineered the uh offending oil tank made it encompassing so they would fit you didn't have to cut away the body so there we go i like that the storm is like that oh and it did have the intakes and windows as well anyway now we need to make it be light guard got a long way to go with daylight receding once more i set off on the 400 kilometers to strasbourg arriving at another hotel after midnight before getting up early the following morning to head the final 150 kilometers to stuttgart a quick early morning run on some de-restricted autobahn a splash of fuel a couple of corners on its home roads near vysac and then i delivered it back to the factory badge streaked with grime arch vents littered with detritus titanium exhaust dirty in both sound and appearance evidence of an epic road test [Music] after two thousand seven hundred kilometers over seventeen hundred miles there seemed no better place to finish than here in the porsche museum with this an original 718 rs but what to conclude about the gt4 rs after all those different roads that incredible road in spain what can we conclude about it well i think it's even better than i thought it was going to be i mean on paper obviously the mixture of the 718 chassis and its fabulous balance with the emotional performance of that gt3 engine it's a match made in heaven how could it go wrong but i think the execution is just so good because it's rawr than i even dared hope it might be the way you hear everything from that engine because it's right in there with you inside the car is just brilliant it's it's almost the sort of car you don't expect to find today and the fact that it has the analog dials and things like that it just feels so special i think this is a car that sits right up there in the pantheon of great porsches more than worthy of a place in the museum one day alongside its ancestors and i suppose the real test is would i give him the chance want to go right back to the start straight away and do that journey all over again yes yes i would [Music] strange feeling of deja vu [Music] you

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Id: Z6GFGnV5cOg

Length: 22min 50sec (1370 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 22 2022