The 718 is nearly done - all things considered, was the GT4 as good as it ever got?
4.0-litre naturally aspirated flat-six petrol, rear-wheel driveMore refined than the 981 GT4, which you might not likeA lot of cars have good powertrains, and a lot have good handling. There’s a growing but smaller number of cars that have both. As you continue going the wrong way down this particular telescope you’ll pass by a still smaller selection of cars that manage to raise this combination of talents to a special level of excellence.
At one point the new GT4 was going to be powered by a version of the Cayman’s 2.0 four. Thankfully someone important at Porsche decided that it deserved something rather meatier, so it ended up with another naturally-aspirated six, this time a 4.0 litre that was essentially a bored and stroked version of the 3.0-litre turbo engine used in the 992 911 Carrera. The 3.8’s cast sump was replaced on the 4.0 by a 36 per cent lighter plastic item, and start-stop made its first appearance in the Cayman.
Today, nearly five years on from the start of the production run, used buyers in the UK still need to find at least £70k for a GT4, which is just £5k below the new 2020 base price. None of that has stopped the GT4 from becoming the second most popular 718 Cayman in the UK after the T, with around 80 examples for sale on the British used market at the time of writing in May 2024.
Some thought that the 4.0 engine was a bit less soulful than the 3.8, which you could put down to the usual causes – particulate filters, noise regs etc – none of which were the 4.0’s fault. Again, it’s all relative. Anybody coming to a gen-two GT4 from pretty much anything else at the same or even quite a bit more money would be extremely unlikely to be disappointed by their purchase.
Surprisingly perhaps the standard battery was a conventional lead-acid type. Replacing that with a lithium battery saved getting on for 15kg. No recoding was needed to make sure it cooperated properly with the car’s electrical system. Get the recipe right and the result was exemplary body control and fantastically predictable responses. You needed to be quick on the draw to catch a wayward gen-one GT4, a car that could be disconcertingly light at the back end on very fast sweepers, but even your granny could notch up a respectable lap time in a gen-two without needing so much as a calming cup of cocoa afterwards.
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