What We Learned After Testing a Porsche 718 GTS 4.0 40,000 Miles | Car and Driver

we praise Porsches for being everyday livable sports cars and what better proof of that would be to subject this 718 Cayman GTS 4 liter to a year-long test where we aim to put around 40 000 miles now we'll take every excuse we can get to drive a car like this right and that's where you're probably thinking oh poor us you have a point the boxer and Cayman have been on our 10 best lists for 16 years running so clearly this wasn't going to be a strenuous challenge now the driving experience at the end was everything you or I or anyone else might hope it would be but the long-term experience wasn't always peachy or cheap let's get into why foreign the most surprising thing about this particular Porsche is that it's as tested price didn't Crest one hundred thousand dollars it got close though the base car which of course we got with a six-speed manual transmission started at around 89 Grand and then there was roughly ten thousand dollars worth of options and that's a light dusting by Porsche's usual standards some of those options included things like the espresso brown leather ventilated seats Bose surround sound and gloss black brake calipers yes 900 for black brake calipers all that aside though the stuff that matters at the core of this vehicle comes standard like the Pirelli P0 pz4 summer Tires and adapted suspension that Porsche calls pasm the feature we appreciate most though is how Porsche mates this chassis to have been mounted 4-liter flat six that's also naturally aspirated and sounds like this this package is just delightful from the steering to the shifter it's the powertrain response and the sound the ride and handling to the point where it just got effusive praise in our logbook love the way this thing made us feel in fact when you think about how a sports car should make you feel while you're driving it this is the template I don't know if there's anything that's out there that's much better and so if you're out there designing a sports car and you haven't driven this thing you're doing yourself a disservice the engine makes a little bit less than 400 horsepower but the car itself weighs less than 3 200 pounds and that means that our test track we were able to get 60 mile an hour acceleration in 3.9 seconds and the quarter mile in 12.1 seconds on the skid pad it did 1.03 G and stopped from 70 at 104 five feet that's great performance but to be honest if this thing made half the power and was still geared appropriately I think we'd still really enjoy driving it the sound it makes from 4000 RPM just listen to this [Music] that sound has you looking for reasons to do that constantly doesn't matter if you're on a back road doesn't matter if you're commuting to work it's it's a beautiful experience every single time but of course you expect all that from a car like this which you may not expect is how livable this Porsche with a GTS badge on it was during our test sometimes the GTS models can be a little firm a little too hard Edge for daily driving but over 40 000 miles this thing was just as content on the commute as it was tackling switchbacks or howling its tires around freeway interchanges in fact it rides better than some sports sedans a few people on staff really enjoyed this thing for long distance road trips too provided they were comfortable driving with just two people and with no more than three carry-ons that's what we're able to fit uh in this car to underneath the front and one in the cargo area in the rear [Music] thank you [Music] that brings us to perhaps the biggest shortcoming of this vehicle and that is a lack of options to put stuff when you're sitting inside of it look we know it's a two passenger or two occupant sports car so but even with that expectation in mind it's kind of ridiculous I carry on me probably like most people a phone a wallet and a set of keys that's it but in this car the options for storage get taken up pretty much immediately with just those items you have a fold out door pocket on the driver's side door and then this shallow bin right here it gets crazy worse when you add a second person who has at a minimum the same amount of stuff if not more like a handbag or a purse with that on board you basically have no space then there's the matter of these cup holders which have been the butt of jokes and Porsches for decades it feels like they've been around a long time and they still feel rickety and cheap and complicated and they don't do a great job of holding your drink either the road noise can also be fatiguing we recorded 75 decibels while cruising at 70 miles an hour at our test track hit course concrete or rough asphalt and the noise can end conversations bizarrely automatic rev matching can't be enabled or disabled independently of the drive modes it's off in normal but on in either sport or Sport Plus until you turn off trash control in which case it's off again why is it like that it's a mystery personally I'd appreciate adjustable lumbar control but of course that's an optional feature on this nearly 100 000 vehicle to be fair though I was the only person on staff to feel that way most people thought these seats were fine and broadly speaking most people who left the criticism of this vehicle in the logbook left with some sort of sentiment that said but this is a small issue [Music] let's talk about winter when this car showed up for testing we mean literally the first day it got dumped on like six inches of powder on top of ice that came from freezing rain earlier that day now look we get it Porsche owners would consider driving a car like this in real Michigan winters like an unforgivable amount of abuse but we're not most Porsche owners in fact we kind of get a perverse joy out of seeing what these cars do in real winter as for equipment we set this car up with a set of Michelin Pilot Alpin ta4s and those were a Porsche spec version those tires would cost you about thirteen hundred dollars on Tire Rack but because they don't get made in the factory 20 inch wheel we also had to get a set of 19-inch Wheels to get them on once it was all equipped and set up this thing did totally fine in the snow in fact when the roads were clear it actually handled pretty well all things considered another fact of life that's impossible to ignore with a Porsche is the cost of Maintenance and repairs for this Thoroughbred we had four scheduled service visits the first one was free courtesy of Porsche's scheduled maintenance plan the remaining three cost in total thirty two hundred dollars roughly the 40 000 mile service the final one that we did at the end of our test that cost for an oil change and oil filter change cabin air filters and inspection an engineer filter and a couple other things that alone cost over thirteen hundred dollars now generally these service visits went very smooth we only had one hiccup at the 30 000 mile service that one calls for new spark plugs when we brought the vehicle in the tech didn't have the special tool required to access the plugs in this car which are apparently pretty difficult to access so we had to bring the car back later when that tool came in then you get into the stuff that was our fault into some repairs too we had to replace the rear tires just before 20 000 miles that was around 830 bucks and you can blame our Collective heavy right feet foot for that uh we did also cause more damage somehow at around 26 000 miles we noticed there was clutch slip happening during High engine speed up shifts and it ended up being exactly what it sounds like clutch abuse but in order to know that we actually had to inspect the clutch and that requires removing the transmission that is not a quick or inexpensive process you can read the accompanying story with this video to get more information on that the gist is though once we got the transmission out and once we were able to see the clutch it was obvious there were signs of clutch abuse we don't know who caused it nobody fessed up to it but because clutches are where items we were on the hook for that repair bill which was almost forty nine hundred dollars fortunately though during that repair the text noticed an oil leak from a chain tensioner and they repaired that under warranty and that's likely why this vehicle started consuming about a little over half a quart of oil in a thousand miles leading up to that service that's it for problems except for one strange one-off where during a drive the air conditioning would refuse to blow cold and the buttons for the satellite radio just stopped working the air conditioning came back on like a dozen miles later and the button started working again intermittently over the next few days we have no idea what happened we couldn't reproduce it and it never came back maybe it was just electronic interference or a UFO or something weird I don't know [Music] now here's where we get to the no dub part of our long-term test our ownership experience with this 718 was everything you would expect expensive but wonderful worth every penny now some may Tire sure of the lack of interior space or the road noise but this came in is special because it defied that new car stereotype that we simulate with our long-term tests and that's when that new car ecstasy slowly but inevitably phase the realities of The Daily Grind not this GTS 4 liter not ever [Music]

Channel: Car and Driver

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Keywords: 718 gts 4.0, 718 cayman gts 4.0, 718 gts, porsche, porsche 718 gts 4.0, porsche 718 cayman, porsche 718, porsche cayman 718, porsche cayman, porsche cayman gts 4.0

Id: gaPvGT_i_tw

Length: 10min 24sec (624 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 04 2024