All right you hosers, here’s how we review a car like that in Canada.

Now, some of you may be somewhat alarmed that the increasing whiff o’ maple sizzurp around the TTAC offices these days might lead to changes on the site. The Truth Aboot Cars, in which you can expect to find articles like, “Horns: is there a politer solution?” and “How to keep beavers from eating your Morgan Plus-8.”

Tell those concerns to take off, eh? Besides our enormous reserves of lumber, fresh water, oil, uranium and floppy-haired teen idols, Canada has much to offer. In this particular case, it’s the perfect environment for some proper cold weather testing.

But why go through the sheer lunacy of putting a because-race-car like the Cayman R on ice? What does it matter what Usain Bolt runs in the 100m if he’s shod in snowshoes?

Simple. Porsche wants us to.

There’s spin here, at least up North. Porsche is marketing its sports cars as all-weather sleds; as adroit at arctic conditions as they are at apex-clipping.

What better PR pic than a Peridot green Cayman R surrounded by winter wonderland; a bright-green jewel popping out of a snowy backdrop. Better yet, how better to show that all your models are ultra-capable than by slapping Blizzaks on your latest hardcoreish offering and handing the keys over to some ham-fisted bozo?

Speaking as said ham-fisted bozo, I’m not bothered at all by the why. At some point, we’re sure to see a proper on-track dynamic assessment of the Cayman R, hopefully by our not-by-any-stretch-of-the-imagination-tame racing driver but for now, it’s an opportunity to test an interesting car in less-than-ideal weather conditions.

First, what does this snot-rocket’s R designation do, other than appeal to the highly specific Buccaneer track-day enthusiast niche? Porsche might have you thinking it’s a ‘geers-gone-wild special in the vein of the BMW M-Coupe, but the R is a comparatively moderate collection of tweaks.

The suspension has been lowered 20mm. Aluminum doors and other minor dieting mean the fully stripped out version has been lightened by 120lbs (my tester’s PDK and optional A/C adds back on 55lbs and 33lbs respectively). The 3.4L flat-six gets a moderate 10hp bump, mostly from a freer-flowing exhaust and mild tuning. This is a Cayman turned up to 10.5, not 11.

The pushmi-pullyu styling of the Cayman has always been a bit of a head-scratcher for me. With its swollen haunches, the 911 is a fertility idol; in contrast, a Cayman resembles an ergonomic cordless mouse. But the R….

Fixed wing, big wheels, dropped stance, retro-lettered flanks – the Cayman R is a licence to kill your licence. Might I also suggest that Peridot be changed to Yes Officer Green, as in, “Yes officer? Sideways you say? I’m sure I would have remembered that…”

Further appealing lack of subtlety extends into the interior of the Cayman R. Here we find non-reclining carbon-fibre buckets that make ingress tricky and egress spastic, even if you’re a yoga instructor. Forget about giving a lift to someone in a skirt, or a traditionally-dressed Scottish person.

The aforementioned red seatbelts add a frisson of Sentra SE-R Spec-V to the cabin, and then there’re those indescribably stupid door pulls.

Yes, they’re the same ones you get on a GT2 RS. No, it isn’t going to impress anyone when you point out that they’re for weight savings. Fabric door-pulls on a car that’s got cupholders and a CD-storage area is just plain silly. Also, after 6000 miles of use, these ones were getting a bit ratty-looking.

The Cayman R might be flashily attractive, but it’s not going to woo the ladies (or laddies). Unless, that is, you hand over the keys.

Oh, what a fantastic car! What a machine! What a Porsche!

Go ahead, Stuttgart. Build nine versions of the Panamera, and turn 80% of factory production over to pumping out Cayennes for the Chinese market and cancel the sub-Boxster in favour of yet another damn cute-ute, I don’t care. Just keep building this car right here, and all sins are forgiven by the blessed intercession of Our Lady Of Acceleration.

They called it R, they might have called it CS or GTS, or just plain S+, but the nomenclature and the interior contradictions and the eye-searing paint are instantly forgotten as you guide this Cayman out onto the twisting tarmac. The steering is perfect. The soundtrack is flat-6 by John Williams. Flick it into Sport and everything feels fizzy and alive and electric and wonderful.

I don’t even mind the PDK. Granted, to my stone-age way of thinking, a manual-transmission is still preferable for that last crumb of full involvement, but it’s no longer the difference between, say, vinyl and MP3. The difference in experiencing the Cayman R in manual or PDK is equivalent to seeing the band live, or sitting in on their studio recording session. Charming flaws or exquisite perfection: you choose.

Words fail me. I cannot describe to you how truly excellent the Cayman R is short of ten paragraphs of holding down the “!”-key. It is soooo good….

In the dry.

And here we come to the fly in the ointment. Yes, (finally) Porsche is letting its mid-engined wunderkind off ze chain, unleashing its true tarmac potential. Unfortunately, the R’s personality is Dr. Stig-yll and Mr. Slide.

I had the car for an entire week, and got one dry day. The rest of the time it was the usual torrential Vancouver downpour that crushes the spirit and has you wondering if you oughtn’t start gathering the animals two-by-two. In these conditions, the Cayman R surprised me.

It’s not a handful by any means: the chassis is so composed and predictable that any slippage can easily be caught. There just isn’t any grip at the rear.

Maybe it’s the Blizzaks, maybe its the fact that, as we all know, I’m not our resident race-car driver. But under perfectly neutral throttle, curving on-ramps cause the Cayman R’s back end to step out at surprisingly low speed. Having the sport button engaged makes it nearly impossible to get away from a stop without crabbing sideways and engaging traction control. Same thing for low-speed right-angle turns.

Is all this sideways-action fun? Yes, sort of. But it’s not very fast and, based on personal experience, accidentally dorifto’ing past your elderly neighbours in a bright green sports car with “2 CAYMAN” vanity plates makes you feel like a complete Delta Bravo.

Taking the R up the looping road to a local ski hill to try it in the snow was a good core workout, but only because of all the clenching. If you have never been passed by a flume-throwing full-size Range Rover at seventy-five miles-per-hour, in a corner, inches from a concrete barrier, may I perhaps not recommend it to you?

And then, to compound things, the passenger-side windshield wiper stopped functioning. No biggie, as it turned out, just a loose nut, but not really the sort of thing a newish car does if it’s all-weather capable.

So how did it do in the snow? Irrelevant, excepting I didn’t get stuck. Yes, you can drive a Cayman R in the snow, but as Chris Rock pointed out, you can also fly an airplane with your feet: that don’t make it a good idea. Buy a TT-RS, buy an EVO, buy an STi and take it to COBB.

Or, buy a Cayman R, and treat it like a proper sportscar. Don’t bother with the A/C and sound packages, just option the Sport Chrono and the cornering lights. Forget the snows, buy some proper R-Comps and get yourself some good driver instruction.

On the very last day with the R, I came out to find that the morning’s light showers had stopped, and that there would be dry tarmac for the short drive into downtown to drop it off. The fifteen-minute trip from the North Shore through Vancouver proper isn’t a winding country road or a race-track. The way is clogged with harried rush-hour traffic, and local drivers aren’t going to be nice to a green Porsche with Ontario plates.

But when the flat-six thrummed to life, I knew I would be taking the longest route I could figure out, and that half-hour drive was, without question, the highlight of my day.

In summation: it’s fast, it’s flawed, I loved it, so will you. Just, y’know, move someplace sunny.

Porsche provided the vehicle tested and insurance.

I know what you’re thinking.

I’m thinking it too.

Why me? How, with a host of competent hot-shoes, seriously-journalistic scribes and industry insiders here at TTAC, do the keys to a presser Porsche 911 get handed to the guy who publicly admitted to being not a very good driver and who has an unfortunate tendency to use four long words where one short one would do nicely? Would not the readership be better served by someone who could give you an in-depth, accurate 10/10ths dynamic assessment, or a brief, sober buyer’s summary?

Oh, probably. But there are two very good reasons I’ve got this thing.

First, I asked Porsche nicely. And repeatedly. Being that I’m in Canada, politeness works here like a Jedi mind-trick.

Secondly, this 911 is no adrenal-gland-prodding trackday GT3, nor supercar-blitzing Turbo S. Neither is it the new 991 nor the 997 that every other publication has already told you “is the one you want” – the GTS. Scope the specs on this particular slice of Stuttgart spizzarkle: four-wheel-drive, automatic transmission, “base” 3.6L engine – it might as well have training wheels attached.

Quite simply, what we have here is a 911 for Mr. Average, and if you ignore the fact that I’m a ginger, that’s me. I shall put on a hat and go drive it.

A stylistic critique of the 997, 2012 model or not, would be futile. Porsche has been honing the 911′s silhouette since 1963, and this particular variant has been kicking around since the ’05 model year.

Assuming that you don’t live on the moon, you’ve doubtless seen some trim level of the current 911 sitting curbside and drawn your own conclusions about the slippery reversed teardrop with the cello haunches. Corporate grilles be damned, every nuance of a 911′s shape is burned into the collective’s zeitgeist. This is the Porsche, the stallion-crest flag-bearer, and I suppose the only cosmetic things I can point to here are the slightly nicer optional Turbo wheels my tester is fitted with, and the fact that the last few years of 997s have been fitted with larger air intakes and the ubiquitous LED running lights.

But here’s the thing, the thrill I feel as I slide into the near-perfect seats and spend a few clumsy seconds trying to start the car with the key in my right hand (oh right, ignition’s on the left) is short-lived. Despite the flawless autumnal splendour of a rare sunny day in the Pacific Northwest, it takes all of ten city blocks for an invisible hand to twist the dimmer on the neon sign that’s blinking, “OH EMM GEE – I’m driving a 911!” in my head.

In quick succession I am passed by a V10 Audi R8, a white 458 Italia and a bright orange Lamborghini LP-550-2 Valentino Balboni. Hmmm.

Here in the City of Glass with its many narcissism-inducing reflective surfaces – the place that invented the butt-sculpting yoga pant (not that I had anything to do with it, but You’re Welcome) – a 911 Carrera is insufficient for posing; I might as well be driving a 2012 GTi for all the attention I’m garnering. The 911 might be the Porsche, but here it’s also just a Porsche.

The muted grey of this car’s Platinum Silver Metallic paintwork may have something do do with it, but the cheery fact is that the 911 has, over the years, gradually shed the Gordon Gekko ostentation of a crimson, whale-tailed 964 convertible. In an age where hot Bimmers are slathered in M badging and skittle-shaded entry-level coupes like the Hyundai Veloster boast big, blingy, colour-matched rims, mid-line variants of the 911 seem restrained, discreet, reserved. To my mind, that’s a good thing.

A Carrera4 is not – supposedly – meant to be coddled, so through the week a 911 becomes my commuter car. This is not as much fun as it sounds: I have a short drive to work, but at this time of year it’s a tangled mess, clotted with lumps of slow-moving SUVs, snarled by construction and confounded by sheer volume. Each day, I walk out to be greeted by the permeating dampness of a West Coast winter and learn a little more about the idea of a 911 as a daily driver.

Most of it is good. The PDK is somewhat clunky from cold, but soon warms up and begins shuffling through the gears imperceptibly and rapidly; sixth and sometimes seventh gear is achieved at not much more than side-street speeds of 30mph. Smooth yes, sporty no.

The sport seats, as previously mentioned, are fantastic: grippy yet cosseting. The steering-wheel is blissfully free of buttons and gently nudges your hands towards the correct 3-and-9 position. The rest of the interior is fairly spartan, and little different from that of a base-equipped Boxster. Satellite navigation is straightforward to use, the iPod interface is fiddly.

Visibility is excellent. Ride is firm, but acceptable. Tire roar stops just short of Nissan 370Z levels. Parallel parking at first brings beads of sweat to the brow in fear of curbing those low-offset rims, but becomes a doddle with a few days practice.

Whatever visceral tug that iconic shape gave me on Monday morning has been eroded by Saturday evening. The Carrera4 has been competent, welcoming, even reasonable on fuel, but in the day-to-day of city driving it has yet to shine. At this point, it might be tempting to scan the option list and begin grumping about the outrageous cost of extras that should be standard on a $100K car – $400 for auto-dimming mirrors? Really?

Instead, it’s time to head East.

As the sun slips down behind us and the scenery changes from skyscraper-and-supercar to pickup trucks n’ Holsteins, I can feel a little knot of anticipation growing in the pit of my stomach. I’m heading home.

Here, high in the hills above the fertile Fraser Valley, I awake early on Sunday morning to find the 911 coated with crystalline ice, its badge encrusted in hoarfrost. Day is breaking, diamond-bright and brittle-blue, brilliant with all the promise of a cloudless wintry sky. I fire up the big flat-six and a low-pitched thrum backs the percussive tappeting of valves as clouds of vapour issue from twin exhausts to hang in the cold, clear air.

While the frost clears from the windshield, I retreat to the warmth of the kitchen to chat over coffee with my father. About what I can’t remember: it’s not important.

“You want to go for a ride, Dad?”

The Porsche’s summer tires – I am the last to drive this car so shod – are frozen hard as hockey pucks and scrabble at the cracked and heaved pavement at the foot of the driveway. I have the car in Sport Mode with Porsche’s Active Stability Management engaged. This car is fitted with Sport Chrono – a must-have for PDK-equipped cars – and while engaging Sport+ on a public road is the province of sociopaths, kicking the 911 into sport transforms it.

We go haring up the first of several hills, the pleasant whuffling of the Carrera’s exhaust crescendoing into a sonorous turbine-tenor, hard first-to-second, second-to-third shifts hammering us back in the seats with a thump. Finally, Porsche has seen fit to add proper paddle-shifters, though they’re steering-wheel mounted, rather than on the steering column. We climb.

These are the roads I grew up on, intestinal loops of off-camber, often slippery asphalt, patchworked with hasty repairs, rumpled, rutted, rippled, dimpled and undulating. I have ridden the school bus on them, have sat shotgun in my Dad’s ’85 535i as we flew along through tree-dappled sunlight, have nursed a recalcitrant Land Rover along at imprudent speeds during my rash teenage years, have driven them home in the first car I paid for with my own money.

Dad taught me to drive here in that stick-shift E28, and here I am taking him for a ride in one of the finest pieces of machinery ever engineered. We blast along winding, sunny country roads with snow-capped mountains and frost-coated fields as the backdrop, whipping up red-and-yellow vortices of fallen leaves to swirl in our wake. If this is all beginning to sound a bit like a Porsche commercial, that’s pretty much how it felt.

With a dual-clutch gearbox, all-wheel-drive and a hefty price tag, this 911 invites direct comparison to the Nissan GT-R. In fact, picking Godzilla over this car (as optioned) would leave about $10K remaining in your jeans. As a kid, I would have said it was a no-brainer: the car that boasts the better numbers is the better car.

However, I’ve had a reasonable amount of seat-time in Nissan’s scalp-taker, and it’s a very angry, impatient, heavy thing. Where the GT-R stomps, crushing curving tarmac like a steamroller with R-compounds, the 911 fairly dances along the roads.

The Porsche has a taut, sinewy feel as you feed it into a corner and then squeeze the throttle out, feeling a slight hip-pivot caused by the mild pendulum effect of that rear-mounted engine. We’re not hurrying, simply flowing through well-known and well-worn twists and turns, watching for slippery patches and keeping an eye out for neighbours out on horseback. The roads remain abandoned.

I slow as we come to a corner where I remember a past winter’s ice, and sure enough, some badly dug ditchwork has allowed twin rivulets to flow across the steeply pitched road and freeze into thin and splintered sheets. Just for a lark, I lightly goose the throttle from low speed as the 911 picks its way across the ice-patch gingerly, shifting the power around like a cat lifting and shaking its paws as it walks across a wet floor. The result is undramatic: this car is equipped with the new electrically-controlled all-wheel-drive system out of the 997 Turbo, capable of putting 100% of the power to either axle. As the front wheels grip dry tarmac, I’m temporarily piloting a front-wheel-drive 911. Blasphemy.

It’s also capable of an incredible standing start with launch control activated. After stopping to take a quick picture I test it out: Sport+ button engaged. Stand on the brake pedal, bury the throttle in the carpet. 6500rpm. Release the brake.

The result? 0-60 in 4.6 seconds and some seriously impressed Herefords. Or they could be bored. Or hungry. Cattle are a pretty inscrutable lot.

I could drive this car here forever, endlessly looping these empty roads, but this is a fleeting moment and it’s time to return to reality and hand the keys back. But not before handing out one more free ride.

On our way back to the city, we stop in to see a very good friend who is completely useless about cars. His son is just turning five, and is somehow developing into a full-fledged gearhead despite his dad’s neglected Honda Civic and practical minivan. The house is littered with Hot Wheels and Pixar characters. Does he want to go for a ride?

Seconds later, we’re all strapped in, windows down with the heat on full. Bang-bang-bang through the gears and then hard on the brakes as we all dissolve into helpless, joyous laughter. “Uncle Brendan, this car is more fun than I thought it was going to be,” I’m informed with all the irony-free seriousness that the only the very young can manage. Amen to that.

You can buy a 911 in eighteen different flavours, and while this car skews slightly from the way I’d pick mine (skip the PDK, spec an “S”, hold off on the all-wheel-drive and sat-nav and spend the money on driving lessons instead), it’s still a very special car. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

The new 991 is already here, and I can’t wait to drive it and compare it to the low-mile 993 I drove a few weeks ago, and to this, last hurrah of the 997. The truth of this car? If you save up and manage to swing the lease payments, or pick a used one up with 30K on the clock for the same price as a new STi, then you will discover the same thing I have. Just occasionally, there is meat behind the legend. Just occasionally, the reputation is earned.

Porsche provided the vehicle, insurance and one tank of gas for this review.

Strongly feel that Porsche should stick to sports cars? Personally, I’m willing to cut Zuffenhausen a little slack. Sports car sales, with their boom-and-bust cycles, don’t provide a sound foundation for corporate financial health. A more reasonable test: does Porsche’s entry look and drive unlike any other, in a manner consistent with the marque? Though not pretty, the Panamera passed this test. And the Cayenne SUV?

The initial outlook isn’t good. While the Cayenne’s front end strongly resembles those of other Porsche models, the rest of the exterior can easily be mistaken for an Audi or even a Volkswagen. In fact, the first time I saw the redesigned-for-2011 second-generation Cayenne I thought it was an Audi Q5. One reason: while the Panamera is closely related to no other car, the Cayenne retains close ties with the Volkswagen Touareg, which it also resembles. This isn’t entirely a bad thing. Like the second-generation VW, the 2011 Cayenne is sleeker, better-proportioned, and altogether more attractive than its predecessor.

The Cayenne’s interior is more distinctive than its exterior. Whether by actual dimensional differences or by visual trickery, the instrument panel seems significantly lower and more compact in the Cayenne than in the Touareg. As in the Panamera, the IP rests directly atop an upward-sloping center console (its many buttons closer at hand than they would be in a vertical center stack) to form a subtly tapered “T.” The center console’s upward-angled grab handles (why would the driver need one?) are now mirrored by the door pulls (though the latter are mounted farther forward). Put it all together, and the Cayenne seems sportier from the driver seat than any other SUV. Yet, unlike in the Panamera, there’s no sense that you’re actually in a sports car. The seats (and entire vehicle) would have to be much closer to the ground for that.

Porsche’s interiors have come a long way over the past decade, but the new Cayenne’s still includes too much hard plastic that cannot be mistaken for anything else—even when fitted with the tested car’s upholstered instrument panel and center console. One surprising oversight that provides a poor early impression: the artful door pulls flex and creak when put to their intended use. Form clearly took precedence over function.

The Cayenne’s base front buckets are cushier than the German norm. Though they provide some lateral support, anyone planning to drive this Porsche like a Porsche should pony up another $1,815 for the 18-way power-adjustable sport seats. As in the Touareg, the comfortably high rear seat slides and reclines. In its rearmost position there’s plenty of legroom for all but the tallest adults—but the same can be said of many smaller, lighter compact crossovers. Cargo volume is similarly beyond sufficient but well short of outstanding.

As in the Panamera, engine choices include a 300-horsepower V6, 333-horsepower supercharged hybrid V6, 400-horsepower V8 “S”, and 500-horsepower turbocharged V8 “Turbo.” In the Panamera, the V8 takes the car to an entirely different level. With the Cayenne I sampled only the V8, but drove a Touareg with the V6 in 280-horsepoweer tune immediately beforehand. While the V8 is quicker and more sonorous than the V6, it doesn’t transform the Cayenne like it does the Panamera. Blame two factors. First, while the 4,553-pound 2011 Cayenne S is, commendably, 400 pounds lighter than the 2010 and 740 pounds lighter than the similarly-dimensioned BMW X5 xDrive50i, it remains ten percent heavier than the Panamera. About 70 pounds went with the no-longer-offered two-speed transfer case—Porsche figured out that few owners ventured far off the tarmac. Second, while the V8 is paired with a seven-speed dual-clutch automated manual in the big hatchback, it’s hooked up to a conventional eight-speed automatic in the SUV. Though the Aisin box is perhaps the best of its kind, with quick, nearly imperceptible shifts, the PDK shifts even more quickly and provides a manual-like direct, mechanical connection. Bottom line: in the SUV, the turbo is needed to kick the tail out at will and quicken one’s pulse. The reduced curb weight and additional transmission ratios do significantly improve fuel economy, bumping the V8’s EPA ratings from a dismal 13/19 to a respectable 16/22.

The Cayenne is too large (though not too heavy) to feel as chuckable as compact SUVs like the Audi Q5 and BMW X3 (the upcoming Cajun will target these), but too small to have the road presence of a Cadillac Escalade or Infiniti Q56. The boxes not checked affect its braking and handling. Options include ceramic brakes ($8,150), adaptive dampers ($1,990), air springs (another $1,990), active stabilizer bars ($3,510), torque vectoring ($1,490), and ultra-low-profile ultra-high-performance tires ($1,560-$4,875). The tested Cayenne S had none of these. So perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that it didn’t steer or handle dramatically better than the Touareg. Yes, the steering was quicker and more communicative, there was less lean in hard turns, and body motions were more tightly controlled, but the difference was a matter of degree, not of kind. As in the VW, you don’t forget you’re driving a tall, heavy vehicle. And so nothing like the difference between the Panamera and its competitors. By the same token, though, the standard suspension Cayenne S only rides a little more firmly than the Touareg, so it’s more day-to-day livable than the hatchback.

You’re not getting an entirely bespoke vehicle with the Cayenne, and its price does reflect this. Outfit a 2011 Cayenne S with Convenience Package (nav, xenons, Bose audio, heated seats, auto-dimming mirrors), obstacle detection, and full-leather interior, and it lists for $71,780. A similarly-equipped Panamera S lists for nearly $95,000. But even relatively inexpensive Porsches are far from cheap. A BMW xDrive50i with the same bits lists for $65,125, and adjusting for remaining feature differences using TrueDelta’s car price comparison tool adds another grand to the heftier, truckier BMW’s price advantage, for a total over $7,500.

In the end, the tested 2011 Porsche Cayenne S doesn’t quite pass my test. From most angles it’s too easily mistaken for an Audi or even a VW. It handles better than competing SUVs, but not dramatically so. The turbocharged V8 and chassis options might well make a big difference. But if one or more of these are needed to render the Cayenne worthy of the Porsche crest, then why offer the SUV without them?

Scott Vollink of Suburban Porsche in Farmington Hills, MI, provided the car. He can be reached at 248-741-7980.

Michael Karesh operates TrueDelta, an online source of automotive pricing and reliability data

Good news, everybody! All that drama with the nice people at Porsche is totally over! Here’s how the phone conversation went:

*ringgggg*

Jack: STOP CALLING ME! It isn’t mine! I had a vasectomy! I told you beforehand! YOU SAW THE SCARS!

Unknown Caller: Jack, this is Gary Fong, from Porsche Cars North America.

Jack: What can I do for you, Mr. Fong?

Gary Fong: Jack, we want to put this all behind us. All us guys at the office put our heads together and decided that a guy who owns three of our cars, has put hundreds of racetrack laps on Porsches, has served as a driving instructor for dozens of Porsche owners, and has over a million readers every single month of the year deserves at least as much press access as, say, raw-dog random blogs with one comment per article. We’re going to start you off with one of the crown jewels in our lineup: the 2011 911 Turbo S. In Macadamia Brown, of course, and with a sticker of $186,985.

Jack: Gary, I feel this marks a new era of trust and cooperation between our companies, and the real winner of this will be our valued readers.

Gary: Jack, I couldn’t agree more. It isn’t about fluffing moronic racetrack oilers or providing free business-class air travel to people who couldn’t hold up the ass end of a pre-school bicycle rodeo. It’s about making sure Porsche fans, and customers, everywhere, learn the truth about our cars.

I was humbled by Porsche’s decision. And as I stepped out of my white 993 and prepared to experience the 911 Turbo S for the first time, I realized something:

The above scenario will never fucking happen in zillion years. Thank God for Dr. Sanjay Mehta and Larry Woo of RH Motorcars, the buyer and seller, respectively, of this extremely expensive and precious turbocharged Porsche; they were willing to let me take it out and run it up to triple digits. TTAC readers know Dr. Sanjay pretty well, of course, but Mr. Woo will be new to almost all of you. RH has an utterly fascinating inventory, ranging from delivery-mileage Testarossas to brand-new 458 Italias to the original street-spec slant-nose Porsche DP935. If you want to see more tests of RH’s inventory here in TTAC, take a moment to let Mr. Woo know. It’s only a 265-mile roundtrip for me to visit their main showroom and I’m willing to make that trip as often as required. Alright, enough thanking the sponsors, let’s drive the car.

What is a 911 Turbo S? Along with the infamous GT3 RS 4.0, the Turbo S represents about the last possible extension of the 997-generation Porsche. It’s a very, very rapid car. The color rags are obtaining quarter-mile times of 10.7 and 10.8 seconds, with trap speeds of 128-130mph. Even in a the current era of hyper-fast production cars, that should make you sit up and take notice. Thanks to the PDK transmission and four-wheel-drive, you’ll reach the quarter-mile mark ahead of the Carrera GT, McLaren F1, and Ferrari Enzo, although all of them will sail by some time afterwards thanks to superior aerodynamics.

Nominally speaking, the Turbo S isn’t the fastest 911 I’ve driven; that would be the Switzer GT2 P800, an 815-horsepower, rear-wheel-drive monster that once memorably bopped the ’170′ mark on the speedometer as I was entering the mild kink on BeaveRun’s back straight. Unfortunately, nontrivial turbo lag and traction issues hamper the monstrous Switzer until third gear, and even then it’s a good idea to save checking your GChat convos until you’ve grabbed fifth and cleared one-fifty or so. I had the car step out on me once when we were already doing double the Ohio freeway speed limit.

The 997 Turbo S has no such issues. This is what I did: from a nice 5mph roll, I selected first gear in the PDK. After lo these many years, Porsche has finally fitted proper paddle shifters to the 911. No more thumbing your way through the gears. Larry gave me the go-ahead, and I engaged full throttle. The response was instantaneous and head-snapping. The road we’d selected was a narrow industrial-park blind alley which was made by laying thirty-foot concrete slabs end to end. The Turbo reached sixty in what seemed like four of them, bouncing madly around as the wheels lost and gained traction over each uneven gap. Time to shift.

Behold the magic of PDK: it works just as well behind a 530-horsepower Porsche as it does behind a 200-horse GTI. (And probably breaks just as often, but that’s a story for another time.) There was no discernible loss of thrust as the next gear clicked in. My mind had reset into FAST CAR MODE by then after two hours spent driving up in my relatively poky (13.8s quarter-mile) 993, so I had plenty of time to think about grabbing third. By the time I needed fourth, there was a rather large tractor-trailer swelling in the windshield, so I said to Larry, “I’m going to stop the car,” and I stopped it.

I’d never want to pay the replacement tab for Porsche’s carbon-ceramic brakes, but the current ones have a pedal feel best described as “stepping on a steel block mounted on hydraulic rams.” In a few squeaks of the ABS we were motionless once again. Hell of a car.

Make no mistake; you would get used to the power eventually, the same way riders of Kawasaki’s ZX-12 all eventually decide to put nitrous bottles on the thing. My experience driving a few 800-plus-horsepower cars around sunny Powell, Ohio has taught me that there are actually plenty of places to rip out a quick 0-150 everywhere you look, even in suburbia. Your mileage, and ability to survive hitting a tree at warp speed, may vary.

The rest of the 911 Turbo S, excepting the very swank OZ center-lock wheels fitted to our test car, is standard Porsche. That means you’re paying $186,985 for a car that isn’t all that distinguishable inside from a $45,000 Boxster. This particular Turbo S had twenty-six grand worth of options. I uploaded the below picture at full-res so you can read them all.

Some of the highlights:

• Leather bezel for navigation system: $2,225.
• Changing the color of the stitiching on the seats: $1,100.
• Special Cocoa leather: $430. I just want to point out that the “special Cocoa leather” was standard equipment on my Boxster S 550, which was modestly priced at $61,310. Nice of Porsche to charge extra for the stuff on a Turbo that bases at $160K.
• Clear turn signals on the taillamps:$610. This is because clear plastic costs hundreds of dollars per square inch. Or at least it does in Willy Wonka’s Porsche Factory.

Good stuff, and Dr. Mehta will no doubt find that having a leather bezel on his nav system totally eases the kind of stress you feel after spending a whole day killing tumors with laser beams. You have no idea how often it’s pissed me off that my 993 has plastic surrounding the nav system. Actually, it’s plastic surrounding the area where the nav system would be if such a thing had been available. On my car, that area is reserved for… um, nothing. Just a totally empty space. Once upon a time, Porsches didn’t have “full consoles”. Example photo:

This above interior was considered quite the candy-ass thing by people who had this interior in their Seventies 911s:

I think they used the same shifter in the Chevy LUV.

Back to our Turbo S. What else can I tell you about it? It’s remarkably quiet, even given the Tubi aftermarket exhaust fitted to this model. The leaned-back windscreen in the current 997 really kills the wind noise compared to the old cars. The 997 interior, all jokes aside, is a tremendous improvement over the dismal 996 cabin. At the very limit, the Turbo S defaults to understeer. (Wink.) There isn’t much trunk space, because the front differential eats it all. Get a 911 GT2 if you need to carry large objects.

Naturally, I was charmed by the twin-blown S and was pleased that Dr. Mehta decided to make it a 40th birthday present to himself. (For my 40th birthday, which comes up any day now, I’m going to super-size lunch at McDonald’s and luxuriate in the additional volume of french fries.) There are really only two things about which I would like to quibble.

First, the price. It’s ridiculous for a car that shares most of its architecture with the Boxster to cost this much. Either the 911 Turbo is a ripoff, or the Boxster is subsidized heavily by Turbo profits. I bet you it isn’t the latter. The used market isn’t supporting Turbo prices the way it used to, and the used Porsche market is a very savvy market. Once upon a time, the Turbo cost way more because the engine cost way more, but that’s no longer the case…

…which brings me to Quibble #2. Until the “997.2″, all watercooled 911 Turbos had the old split-case GT1 engine that Switzer and others have regularly pushed past the 1000-horsepower mark on stock internals. It’s one of the great engines of this or any other time, and I’ve put a micrometer on disassembled ones myself and marveled at the craftsmanship. The 997.2, however, has a direct-injected 3.8-liter variant of the standard Carrera engine. No more thousand-horsepower tunes, no more ten thousand racetrack miles between oil changes, no more season after season of vicious abuse without so much as a whimper. In the standard Carrera, which had been afflicted for over a decade with suicidal garbage engines possessing the deranged delicacy of Natalie Portman’s character in “The Black Swan”, the new mill is a blessing; in the Turbo, it ain’t. More worryingly, it raises the possibility that somebody with access to Craiglist and TPC’s phone number can spend $45,000 and blow your brand-new 997 Turbo S away using an ’03 996 Turbo and a mid-range tune kit — and you won’t be able to “tune up” to match. True, PDK will keep you ahead of pretty much everything up to the quarter-mile mark, but after that you could be in real trouble.

All quibbles aside, however, this is a very satisfying car, and we didn’t need a free plane trip or quality time with Porsche’s PR pimps to find that out. It only took ten seconds and a not-quite-open space of road. The company itself may be occasionally loathsome, but the Nine Eleven itself can still shine.

The Porsche Panamera: should it exist? Eight years after the introduction of the Cayenne SUV, many enthusiasts remain steadfast in their conviction that Porsche should stick to sports cars with aft-mounted powerplants. While a two-ton four-door is certainly a lesser evil, has Porsche managed to offer one for which there is no available substitute? A $69,000 Cadillac CTS-V performs extremely well, in both objective and subjective terms. Why, then, spend tens of thousands more for a Panamera?

With a disproportionately long midsection and a humped up rear roofline, the Panamera makes a poor first impression. No doubt the designers faced a tough challenge, to take hard points driven by engineering criteria and make the car instantly recognizable as a Porsche. Still, it’s hard to believe that some subtle tweaks wouldn’t vastly improve the design. The Boxster and especially the Cayenne were oddly shaped in their initial iterations, then improved when redesigned. Will the same be the case with the Panamera? As is, the car’s exterior styling isn’t going to compensate for any other weaknesses. Rather, the rest of the car must be even better to compensate for the styling. One success: the Panamera is instantly recognizable as a Porsche.

The Panamera’s interior is more successful, though here again form is driven by function. There are no artfully exaggerated curves. The instrument panel and center console form a simple, subtly tapered T. For the secondary controls Porsche opted to take the road less traveled, and employ a vast array of oversized buttons and switches rather than burying all but the most basic functions in an on-screen menu. Placing these buttons on the center console makes them easy to hit on the fly. Want to adjust the settings for the transmission or the suspension? They’re right there at your fingertips, no need to even lift your elbow off the armrest. Aggressively raking the high center console to provide a large amount of easily viewable and reachable real estate just happens to look suitably sporty in addition to working well. Some hard plastic is evident, most notably on the steering wheel spokes. But everything looks and feels solid. The instrument and door panels are soft to the touch in the standard car and can be covered in stitched leather. Porsche has come a long way since the interiors of the late 1990s 986 Boxster and 996 911. The glossy, light-colored wood in the tested 4S doesn’t suit the character of the car, but there are many other interior trim options.

As soon as you drop into the driver’s seat it’s evident that the Panamera is much different than the CTS and just about every other four-door luxury car. The aforementioned center console is just the start. In sharp contrast to current trends, the instrument panel isn’t much higher than the center console. A Honda Civic might need a huge, visually imposing, two-tiered instrument panel to convey information to the driver, but a Porsche does not. So while the seating position is low, forward visibility is very good. The low, straight lines of the instrument panel and unusually slender front seatbacks only further emphasize the unexpected width of the cabin. The seats are far from cushy, but provide support in the right places, with modestly sized bolsters that nevertheless get the job done. The Cadillac (and every other conventionally packaged four door) feels tall and narrow in comparison. The difference in height between the two cars is actually only three inches, but feels like at least six.

There’s a good reason you sit high in just about every current four-door car: this enables more legroom within a given wheelbase. Yet despite a low seating position and a wheelbase only 1.6 inches longer than that of the CTS, the Panamera’s rear seat is roomy and comfortable. Some credit is due the fairly long wheelbase and humped up rear roofline that make the exterior appear so odd, but these only contribute an inch or two to the equation. Mathematically, the Porsche’s rear seat room just doesn’t seem possible, since more has been taken out of the car’s height than has been added back by these tweaks. Very intelligent interior packaging and seat design deserve much of the credit. Thanks to the slender front seatbacks and expansive windows the view out from the rear seat is much more open than in the average luxury sedan. What you can’t get: a three-person bench. Since only rear buckets separated by a flow-through console are offered, it’s not clear why the Panamera is so wide. For handling?

The emphasis on function continues with the cargo area: entering a field dominated by sedans, the Panamera is a hatchback with split folding rear seatback. You’ll find as much cargo volume in the typical compact hatch, but the Porsche’s versatility is nevertheless a welcome break from the norm.

The Panamera is currently offered with three engines: a 300-horsepower 3.6-liter V6, a 400-horsepower 4.8-liter V8, and a 500-horsepower turbocharged 4.8-liter V8, with a 550-horsepower variant of the last on the way. In terms of power, the Turbo is the closest match for the 556-horsepower CTS-V, so the salesman asked if that’s the one I wanted to drive. This being Michigan, all of the available cars were all-wheel-drive, which is mandatory with the Turbo but optional with the lesser engines. But since the Turbo starts at $136,250 and ends up over twice the price of the CTS-V once typically optioned, I demurred. One of the non-turbocharged cars would be better. By which I meant the V8-powered S. Approaching the car, I noticed that it was actually the Base model, with the V6. I started to walk back in to request the keys to an S when my curiosity got the best of me. Could a V6 actually be a suitable powerplant for a two-ton $90,000 Porsche? So I drove both it and a nearly $120,000 S.

Though the same displacement as the undersquare, narrow-V Volkswagen engine that continues to power the base Cayenne SUV, the Panamera’s V6 is a new direct-injected, oversquare, 90-degree-V unit. It’s essentially Porsche’s V8 less a pair. With its wide V, shorter stroke, and dry sump lubrication system (i.e. no deep oil pan), the new engine should sit much lower than the VW engine would have, enabling both a lower hood and a lower center of gravity.
The base Panamera is quick judging from the rate at which the speedometer needle rotates, and Porsche’s first V6 sounds pleasantry energetic while going about its business, but the engine’s basic competency doesn’t stir the soul. The V6 might be too refined for its own good. The torque curve is so smooth and linear, there’s no point at which it comes alive and then surges to its redline. Which, given the oversquare cylinders, should be much higher than 6,500. Similarly, output should be much closer to 100 horsepower per liter—is Porsche sandbagging to leave room for future upgrades? Currently there’s also not enough torque to throw you back in your seat or to rotate the all-wheel-drive chassis; the rear-wheel-drive car could be more entertaining.

After driving the V6 I was about ready to ascribe the lack of visceral thrills to the car as a whole—but then I drove the V8-powered Panamera 4S. The subjective difference is night and day, even if the objective difference from rest to sixty is only about a second (4.8 vs. 5.8, according to Porsche). It only winds a couple hundred rpm higher, and does no better in power per liter, but the V8 sounds and feels far more energetic than the V6. And this is before tapping the button to open up the $2,950 “sport exhaust,” which releases a bunch more burble. Even hobbled with all-wheel-drive the larger engine rotates the rear end at will, shoves the seat into your back, and encourages bad behavior in ways the V6 doesn’t begin to. Would the Turbo make me feel the same about the normally-aspirated V8? I doubt it. Though down 156 horsepower, the regular V8 can go toe-to-toe with the CTS-V in the visceral thrills department. The Turbo is no doubt quicker still, but the difference is likely a matter of degree rather than of kind.

It helps that the Panamera is substantially lighter than the CTS-V wagon. Even in all-wheel-drive 4S form the large hatch weighs 4,101 pounds, compared to the Cadillac’s 4,398. Clearly some of the extra money spent on the Porsche goes towards some premium, lightweight materials.

In a sign of the times, a third pedal is not available. All of the Panamera’s engines pair with a “PDK” seven-speed dual-clutch automated manual. In casual driving this transmission behaves enough like a conventional automatic, with smooth shifts, that some owners will never realize that it isn’t one. The PDK’s most notable flaw: even in normal mode it sometimes holds a low gear far longer than it has to. This flaw is more than outweighed by the transmissions many strengths. Because, like a conventional manual, the PDK provides a direct mechanical connection between the engine and the wheels, responses to the throttle are stronger and more immediate than with a conventional, torque-converter-equipped automatic. Full-throttle shifts are nearly instantaneous, so minimal momentum and microseconds are lost in the process. Manual shifts can be summoned via buttons on the steering wheel. But this is rarely necessary. Instead, hit the “sport” or “sport plus” button on the console, depending on how aggressive you want the transmission’s gear selections to be. A third pedal might add some needed driver involvement with the V6. But with the V8 one wasn’t much missed.

Even the base Panamera is fitted with huge brakes, 14.2” discs clamped by six-piston calipers up front and 13.0” discs clamped by four-piston calipers in the rear. So strong, fade-free braking is a given. Less common: these strong brakes aren’t touchy in casual driving, provide clear feedback, and are very easy to modulate. Speed can be scrubbed as quickly and precisely as it can be gained.

More than anything else, I was curious about how the Panamera would steer and handle. The steering is light, but immediate, quick, and precise. Though not exactly chatty, there’s good feedback and the long, wide hatch can be intuitively placed exactly where you want it. The harder the Panamera is driven, the smaller and lighter it feels, though the nagging feeling that the car is a couple inches longer and wider than it needs to be never quite goes away. Something just seems wrong about driving a car with a full-sized back seat like a sports car. Yet I couldn’t stop myself from doing it. Balance and poise are superb. Hammer the car through a bumpy curve and it easily maintains it composure, varying not a touch from the chosen line. Even with all-wheel-driven the chassis feels dynamic—especially with the V8 to kick the tail out a notch. The adjustable shocks standard with the V8 and available for $1,990 on the V6 can be employed to further reduce roll and tighten up the chassis, though the difference isn’t large. Want even livelier handling and even flatter cornering? A system that pairs active stabilizer bars with a torque vectoring rear differential is available, but will set you back $5,000 plus another $1,990 for the required air suspension.

Given this handling, it should come as no surprise that the Panamera rides less smoothly than the CTS-V, much less the average luxury sedan. The ride is far from harsh, but it is very firm. Even small bumps and divots can be felt—and heard. The tires clomp loudly across all but the smoothest surfaces. The optional air suspension might help here, but probably cannot perform miracles. A reason not to buy the Panamera? Not for anyone who cares at all about driving. But those who are seeking luxury first and foremost will be happier elsewhere.

The Panamera being a Porsche, it will cost you dearly, especially if you’re not careful with the extensive options list. All-wheel-drive adds $4,000, about double what others charge. Want this or that bit of the interior covered in leather? Larger wheels? Or a special color? They’ll do that—as long as you’re willing to pay. Painted air vent slats? A mere $2,330. Checking all of the boxes will more than double the base price. The tested Panamera 4 was lightly optioned, and still listed for $90,360, well above the $79,925 base price. The moderately optioned 4S, with a base price of $95,725, listed for $119,525. Dimensionally, the new Audi A7 sport hatch is very close to the Panamera, but costs over $20,000 less. The Audi is initially offered only with a 310-horsepower supercharged V6, though, so it competes only with the Panamera V6. Compare the Panamera 4S to a BMW 550 xDrive using TrueDelta’s car price comparison tool, and the feature-adjusted premium for the Porsche approaches $30,000. To be fair, a Maserati Quattroporte is about $30,000 in the other direction, while not steering and handling nearly as well. And an Aston Martin Rapide, with its sharper styling but less usable back seat? If you have to ask…

Ultimately, semi-exotic price notwithstanding, the Panamera can be justified. Porsche didn’t simply copy what others have been doing then attach its marque to the result. Instead, its engineers thoroughly reworked the envelope to make a large four-door car feel as much like a sports car as possible—while still providing above-average levels of comfort and versatility. People have often claimed that BMW’s sedans and those that have tried to beat them at their own game (e.g. the CTS) drive like sports cars. They don’t. Even if a sedan achieves the same test track results as a sports car, if it has the driving position, center of gravity, and suspension geometry of a sedan it will feel like a sedan.

In sharp contrast, the Panamera sits like a sports car and drives like a sports car, albeit a very large one. The V6, though it posts respectable test track times and is far from the embarrassment it could have been, comes up a little short in visceral thrills, at least in its initial iteration. The specs for both the V6 and V8 suggest plenty of headroom for easy upgrades, but higher-winding, more powerful engines are only future possibilities. Though Porsche charges $12,690 for its additional pair of pistons, the V8-powered Panamera S is currently the way to go. Perhaps if someone else had combined sports car dynamics and an adult-friendly back seat in the same car, Porsche would not have had to. Until someone else does, there is no substitute.

Scott Vollink of Suburban Porsche in Farmington Hills, MI, provided the cars. He can be reached at 248-741-7980.

Michael Karesh operates TrueDelta, an online source of automotive pricing and reliability data

300 plus horsepower, mid-engine sportscars are a rare breed. It stands to reason then, that they should be reviewed by someone who can put them into their rarefied context. The kind of reviewer who can tell you the subtle handling differences between each generation of the 911, and whose keyboard is stained with the oil of a hundred home-rebuilt crankcases. At the very least, they should be reviewed by the kind of people who get regular seat time in the unjustifiably potent mid-engined supercars that you’d have to purchase to one-up a mid-engine Porsche’s considerable capabilities. So what happens when a Porsche Cayman S ends up in the hands of someone who is used to getting their motoring kicks with a mass-market hatchback?

The obvious answer isn’t complicated [Ed: watch out for garage doors?]. Without a thorough knowledge of the Cayman’s competition, the only impression that lasts is a lingering soreness around the muscles that were forced to spend several days clenched into a shit-eating grin. If that’s good enough for you, then by all means, grab your checkbook and prepare to lighten it of the Cayman S’s $61,500 price of admission. After all, it’s just money.

Of course, that’s not how things work around here. Luckily, some of TTAC’s most experienced writers have already put the Cayman S through its paces, and can cogently compare the crocodilian coupe to its competition from within Zuffenhausen, and beyond. Their sage verdicts confirm what is fast becoming gospel for sportscar fans: the Cayman S is the Porsche for enthusiasts looking for more poise and less pose.

But here’s the catch: by gaining accolades from those in the know, the Cayman has developed its own brand of snob appeal. And luckily for Porsche, there are plenty of buyers who want to cash in on its enthusiast halo, whether they regularly drive past 7/10ths or not. Are these uninitiated post-posers in for the kind of nasty surprises that once made Porsche infamous for killing its clientele, and still keeps Lotus Elise ownership in the domain of hard-core anoraks?

Entering the low-slung coupe provides the first hint that Porsche’s junior coupe doesn’t ask as much from the driver as other “pure” enthusiast choices. Not only are entry and egress easily accomplished, but once seated, the Cayman is as intimidating as dachshund puppy. Sure, it’s low to the ground, but visibility is surprisingly unimpeded by its sloping fastback. The effect is a confidence-inspiring user-friendliness that makes the Cayman feel like it’s wrapped itself around before you even leave the lot.

Unfortunately, this intuitive, confidence-building impression is severely let down by the Cayman’s cockpit. Driving your first Porsche? You will instantly be aware of how little of your $60k+ went towards the interior materials. Of course, the Porsche is plush where it matters, namely in the seat and steering wheel departments. Otherwise, you’ll quickly start craving the aluminum simplicity of an Elise. Especially when you realize that your expensive navigation option is no more functional or appealing than the dour plastic that surrounds it.

Never mind the bollocks: you didn’t just snag the fastest mid-engine sportscar under $100k to be swathed in creature comforts. There are plenty of front-engine GT cars that can haul ass and keep you feeling wealthy without having to stare at the steering wheel’s Porsche badge (or, if you’re actually truly wealthy, paying Porsche to pimp your Cayman’s interior). What these cars won’t do, however, is inspire complete confidence from the moment you step into the heavily-weighted gas pedal, and trundle the thing out onto the road.

Around town, the Cayman’s compact stance and brilliant packaging make a surprisingly strong argument for the Cayman S as a daily driver. Not only does it hold more cargo than you’d ever guess (more, for example, than the Lexus IS250C we traded in for it), but it’s also handy in the tight car parks that fluster so many sexily-styled sportscars. In this era of high beltlines and ubiquitous back-up cameras, knowing where your corners are at all times is the ultimate luxury.

Of course, the Cayman S isn’t the perfect city car. The 320 horsies hanging out behind your back must be managed with a subtle right foot to keep the dual-clutch transmission from confusing your request for additional shove with the desire for a woofing visit to the 7200 RPM redline. The steering, though precise and ultimately well-weighted, will come off as a bit heavy and pointy to wannabe-enthusiasts raised on the overboosted helms of mass-market Americana.

The freeway onramp is the first chance to test the real reason you sprang for a Cayman S. With the transmission in drive, the first few gears clunk somewhat heavily into action, as 3.4 liters of flat-six grab the ground and throw it backwards, leaving the rapidly disappearing traffic to deal with the consequences. Entering a cloverleaf onramp faster than expected, the instincts tell you to ease up on the throttle as the suspension begins to load up.

Screw your instincts, you have more grip than you know what to do with. In fact, the scariest moment I ever experienced in my time with the Cayman S was on my first onramp, when adrenalin and self-preservation instincts quietly whispered that I should back off the throttle, which I did with all the grace of a newbie handling 300 horses. The PDK grabbed its accelerating gear, and lurched sickeningly. Lesson learned: never stop powering through that corner. I take a moment to thank my lucky stars that my first Porsche experience did not take place in the era of epic lift-off oversteer.

On the freeway, the Cayman S remains firmly planted and remarkably refined. Oh yes, and fast too. Speeds that I’d previously reached over long, straight distances in empty Eastern Oregon were suddenly possible in the short gaps between waves of Southern California traffic. And when another clot of Prii starts to fill the Cayman’s fishbowl windscreen, the brakes haul it back to legal speeds with equal nonchalance. If you’re a speed freak with a high tolerance, you might want to consider an extra several hundred horsepower. Or you could just read a good biography of James Dean.

After all, 320 hp is likely to be enough for most Cayman owners for the same reasons that keep most of them snorting their cocaine instead of cooking it into crack. The sad truth about cars like the Cayman S (and recreational drugs like cocaine) is that you typically find your limits long before you find the outer limits of their potent capabilities. And exploring those limits usually ends up more closely resembling work than any kind of actual recreation.

And that doesn’t just mean pushing the Cayman’s epic grip to the point where the ass-end slides so subtly that you’re not sure if you just imagined it. For one thing, try finding an empty, winding road in the Southern California area. After a few hours, you’ll be feeling the toothless desperation of a sidewalk spare-change hustler. And once you do find a tight ribbon of tarmac, you’ll be an invincible, king-of-the-road, canyon-carving hero… until you come up on another NSFWing Prius.

For those brief moments when the road is curving and empty, you’ll reach a level of connectedness to a machine that most people never feel. In fact, you’ll be so intoxicated by the experience, you won’t even realize how terrifying your pace was until you reluctantly let your passenger take the wheel. Suddenly disconnected from the telepathic steering, chortling oomph and effortless brakes, the experience couldn’t be more different. And terrifying. Like having someone clap their hands over your eyes while you’re driving a “normal” car. What more do you say about a car’s ability to communicate with the driver?

But then, I’d already read the paeans to the Cayman’s communication skills. I’d read about the crazed cornering speeds, the flattering flatness of the Cayman’s roadholding, the potent shove from its flat-six. And to be perfectly honest, it feels exactly how you’d imagine. Which is to say, lovely. More surprising: the fact that this car can turn a entertaining mountain blast into white-knuckle work without ever scaring you, and then trundle down the freeway in quiet comfort and park effortlessly in the tightest, tiniest structure.

In short, the Cayman S is a gateway drug. It seems like everything you’ll ever want and more than you’ll ever really need. But each time you go out driving, you’ll be pushed to push a little bit harder. It’s undiscovered limits will tease you that much. You’ll want more… and then, just a little bit more. Before you know it, you’ll end up like Dean. Or worse still, you’ll end buying an even more potent supercar.

Budget of Beverly Hills, an independently owned-and-operated franchise of Budget Rent-A-Car gave us a discounted rental rate on the vehicle for this review. And having endured a nightmare experience with other, non-independent Budget shops in the area, we feel obligated to note that, in addition to offering a wide variety of luxury and exotic cars as well as “regular” rentals, Budget of Beverly Hills also provides a very un-Budget-like level of customer service.

Luckily for us, TPC customer Joseph Lakowicz was on hand and he positively insisted that I drive his Meteor Grey 997 TT Tiptronic, tuned by TPC to produce approximately six hundred horsepower. Faced with this opportunity to pedal yet another ten-second car on the public roads, I did what any of TTAC’s readers would have done: I took the TPC Tip TT (that’s a mouthful) to visit my childhood home in Columbia, Maryland. I expected that we might be challenged at stoplights by machinery as diverse as the Toyota Highlander and Lexus RX350, and that we would smoke those mothers. This expectation was not entirely fulfilled, as you will see.

It’s been a while since I lived in the little house on Tower Top Court in Columbia’s Long Reach Village. In fact, it’s been more than twenty-six years. One might think that Porsche’s “PCM” navigation system would be capable of finding a three-decade-old home on the East Coast, but in the end Joe and I had to resort to using my BlackBerry’s Google Maps application. “I really don’t mess with the navigation… it doesn’t seem very good,” Joe opined, and he is correct. PCM is a mess and you could get better navigation in a twenty-grand Ford Fusion, or by selecting the very cheapest Garmin GPS at your local Best Buy.

Once the BlackBerry pointed us in the proper direction, however, we were able to head that way with nothing less than utter ferocity. This four-wheel-drive Turbo launches from a stoplight as if it were departing the USS Nimitz on the hook of a steam catapult. Like all pre-PDK 997 Turbos, this is a five-speed, torque-converter gearbox without launch control, so one merely steps on the brake and dials up about 2500 rpm. Releasing the brake will chirp all four corners, flash the traction light, and render the traffic on both sides invisible.

Given that the Tiptronic offers a dilatory, uncooperative sort of steering-wheel manual control, one might be tempted to make one’s own shifts during these stoplight blasts. My second attempt at doing so caused the grey Turbo to select neutral instead of second gear, forcing me to coast to the side of the road as the aforementioned Highlanders and RX350s cruised triumphantly by. Nothing short of restarting the car would permit it to select a forward gear again. It turns out that the 997Turbo is too smart to let you grenade the transmission with excessive force during a shift, surely a reassurance to anybody contemplating pumping-up their own Porsche with this kind of thrust. Best to leave it in “D” and enjoy a completely no-hassle trip into the ten-second zone.

After more than 24,000 satisfactory miles, Joe swears by the concept of the Tiptronic Turbo. I’m not so sure, but there is some massive satisfaction to be had from driving something so disturbingly quick and yet so completely tractable. In the stop-and-go traffic that characterizes Columbia’s main roads, the TPC tune is utterly unnoticeable. This Turbo is as friendly as a Camry while crawling at five miles per hour, and if the navigation is garbage, the hand-sewn cocoa leather dashboard is first-rate enough to soften the annoyance.

Let a hole in traffic appear, no matter how slight, and the big Porsche rips through it with a slurred downshift and a lag-free punch in the back. It is quiet, tractable, and faster than a 997 Cup Car in a straight line. This on-road supremacy is the fulfilled promise of the 1974 Turbo Carrera model, made reality after thirty-some years. Track junkies and back-road blasters will find more satisfaction in a GT3 or — whisper it — a Cayman S. The stock Turbo suffers from being a little slower than a GT-R or Z06, but TPC neatly rectifies this problem at a price considerably below what Porsche would charge.

I arrived at my childhood home to find it much smaller, and much humbler, than I remembered. A quick check of recent real estate sales, however, showed that it was worth more than four hundred grand. This Turbo is similarly deceptive. Subtle to a fault, easy to drive, it can still do the business like almost nothing else. The child in me likes it, as does the adult.

Porsche has a Lego set as well. The same basic set of components is used to create everything from a $45,000 Boxster to a $230,000 GT2. If you think it costs five times as much to make a GT2 as it does a Boxster, you’re probably an outstanding candidate for one of those $11,000 Hublot watches that uses an el-cheapo ETA mechanism to actually tell time. Nope, it’s mostly additional profit at the top of the pyramid. Porsche protects their oh-so-exclusive product ladder by refusing to assemble their Legos into toys like, say, a turbocharged Cayman.

If one listens to Porsche spokespeople, they have many reasons why a turbo Cayman wouldn’t be possible, feasible, or reasonable. These reasons are quite convincing, and they are repeated ad infinitum. Eventually the strong impression is created that a turbo Cayman would be a feat equal to, say, the Manhattan Project. Which makes it all the more interesting that there’s a guy in a shed who builds them for ten grand.

Well, TPC’s Mike Levitas isn’t exactly a guy in a shed. He’s a former Rolex-GT-at-Daytona winner with an extensive engineering background, and he’s devoted a lot of thought to his pressurized Caymans. For $9,995 plus installation, he will put nearly five hundred horsepower behind the seats of Porsche’s factory-crippled hardtop Boxster.

I recently had the opportunity to drive a rather well-sorted TPC Cayman S Turbo at the company’s headquarters outside Washington, DC. In the name of “balance” — something Levitas can wax rather poetic about, given the opportunity — this car was set up for approximately 380 horsepower at 5psi or so of boost and modified with a variety of JRZ and TPC suspension items.

Outside of a racetrack, it’s difficult to get even a standard Cayman 2.7 to its limits, but I was able to verify in a few short triple-digit blasts that TPC’s power numbers seem very legit. This car has pull to match a GT3 and shame a 997S, delivered across a very broad torque curve. If anything, it feels stronger than a GT3 until the very end of the rev range. Naturally, TPC will happily reprofile your boost curve if you want that top-end hit for road course work or midnight street racing.

The rest of the TPC mods also seem reasonably successful. It’s not difficult to imagine that this car would run in nearly a dead heat with a brand-new GT3 around most road courses. Ride quality is no worse than what you would find in said GT3 and pothole compliance appears to be excellent. The (anonymous by request) owner of this particular example uses it as a daily driver and a stealthy, confusion-causing trackday toy. You could do the same.

And you could do it cheaply, relatively speaking. Early 3.4-liter Caymans are now crossing auction blocks for forty grand. A $25,000 check to TPC would nearly duplicate our tester, so it is perfectly possible to obtain Z06-matching performance for the price of a lightly-used Z06. Or you could look it as GT3 lap times for half price. Porsche Cars North America would no doubt prefer you didn’t.

Which brings us to one tiny problem with this lovely mid-engined coupe. The watercooled Porsche engines produced from 1997 to 2008 are famously fragile, even without turbocharging. Porsche kept its split-case race-style engine for the Turbo, GT3, and GT2 until the recent arrival of its completely re-engineered waterboxer. There is no way that this particular Lego set will be as durable as, say, a 2001 996 Turbo. Perhaps this was the reason Porsche never turbocharged the car, although it doesn’t explain why there’s no new-generation Cayman Turbo. Oh well. TPC states that they have yet to experience a turbo Cayman or turbo Boxster failure, which may be reassuring enough for most buyers.

As the price of Porsche’s 911 Carrera sneaks ever closer to $100,000 in even mildly-equipped form, it might be time for the German fiscal adventurists to admit that their core product is becoming rather irrelevant. A factory Cayman Turbo would offer performance just shy of the Nissan GT-R and Z06 Corvette for similar money. That’s a formula that has worked for Porsche in the past (see: 1986 Porsche 944 Turbo) and it could work again. Heck, it might just create a new generation of Porsche fans. If the men from Weissach want some help assembling their Legos, I suspect TPC would be happy to take their call.

Quick: name a major multinational automotive motorsport series where a rear-wheel drive, naturally aspirated vehicle isn’t the dominant player in the field. Sure, there’s a turbo here and Quattro there, but the Porsche GT3’s template is the recipe for success from F1 to the 24 hours of LeMans. This simplistic design demands predictable power and handling poise, rewarding the driver with a loyal soldier who doesn’t lose steam from heat stroke, or fall to a snapped axle shaft or roasted clutch. Which is why the Porsche GT3 is an effortless street machine that’ll never miss a beat on the track.

Seeing is believing, and love at first sight is only the beginning. Compared to bloated muscle cars, Godzilla GT-Rs and overwrought Ferraris, the current 911 is tribute to Porsche’s finest forefathers. It’s a tradition of continuous improvement while remembering where you came from. More to the point, the GT3 is cut from the same cloth. Beetle-like front projectors, voluptuous fenders, tall greenhouse and low beltline are both classic and contemporary in execution. And the roof’s gentle teardrop curvature works nicely with acres of tumblehome: all harmonizing with the anti-riceboy sweeps of the GT3’s dual plane rear spoiler. Aside from the immature smile on the front bumper’s face, this car has all the right lines in the right places.

Inside is more of the same story, except there’s less. As in no vestigial back seat, a feature not missed given Porsche’s top drawer carpeting and seamless interior design. The standard buckets have suede inserts to do the body hugging thing right, yet accommodate a variety of Yankee-posteriors with ease. The other race ready touch points (steering wheel and shifter) ditch their slippery leather coverings for more suede: paired with racing gloves, the GT3 provides a Velcro-like surface to help drivers focus on—wait for it–driving. Wow.

But there’s still room for improvement. By name and price tag alone, the GT3 is a poseur magnet: but even wannabes know sunroofs have no place on a serious track machine. Yet the Navigation with Sport Chrono package gives a host of track and road trip worthy functions that are worth every penny.

All of which disappears into nothingness when the business of driving ensues. The GT3’s rousing engine note demands silence from the cabin, with an angry, camshaft-dominating burble you can’t duplicate in a boosted 911. Let the clutch out, slowly build some revs and feel a car that’s as pure to drive as a Boxster, but pulls with all the veracity of a turbocharged boxer. Enjoy the perfectly weighted steering unmarred by power delivery duties, linear stoppers, a reasonably quiet ride and delightful engine bark at civilized speeds: even the race ready GT2 can’t match the smooth, consistent mannerisms of the GT3.

But this so isn’t a Boxster. Fast sweepers become tests of will and life insurance policies, as the GT3’s boundless grip and flat cornering create overconfident drivers like beer muscles on bad boy wannabe. It’ll happen to the best, considering the engine’s seamless thrust and baby powder smooth, quick ratio gearbox. Exit a corner, blip the throttle for a quick downshift, and power through the VarioCam’s 8000 rpm redline.

So let’s get serious. Drop the clutch and feel the GT3’s moderate low end torque, face-planting midrange and sternum-compressing top end. Goodness, this car just keeps revving and revving. Grab the suede shifter for another hit of Zuffenhausen’s hot sauce: keep the speed on, change it up with effortless straight line braking and then grab a lower gear, powering out the apex with ease.

Perhaps the GT3 makes performance driving too easy: the symphony of engine sounds, fragrant fabrics, Renaissance artist worthy controls and the ability to blur the scenery in a few seconds means there’s far too much gratification available from a single automobile. Yet, my time with the Porsche GT3 was all for not. Driving at 8/10ths is an insult to this car’s potential: unfortunately there wasn’t a racetrack in sight.

Pity that. If only there was a road course to pit the 3100lb GT3 against the other all-motor heavyweight, the 3200lb Corvette Z06. The GT3’s stunning Pirelli PZero rubber aside, the General’s long forgotten mega-horse monster is still a credible threat to Porsche’s finest: run both on race tires and things might get real ugly, real fast. Then again, the bargain basement Z06 is approachable for good reason: there isn’t a single serrated edge on the GT3. Once again, the Porsche justifies its premium.

But few Porkers come along with this much grunt, sans power robbing all-wheel drive and forced induction’s delayed gratification. The Porsche 911 GT3 is a sports car in the purist sense, providing confident understatement and manhandle-free performance in any driving condition. It’s the pure-ist Porsche, pure and simple.

[Motorwerks of Houston provided the vehicle reviewed]

Performance 5/5

You can never have enough power, but this one’s got enough.

Ride 4/5

Reasonably calm, quiet and collected on the street.

Handling 5/5

And it might be the best in the world.

Exterior 5/5

If a regular 911 is dull, this is good taste’s upper limit of good taste.

Interior 5/5

Porsche perfection with a kick of suede for extra comfort.

Fit and Finish 5/5

Insert a blanket statement on German Engineering here.

Toys 4/5

Navigation, Bluetooth, Sport Chrono and the make for Track and Street perfection.

Desirability 4/5

A little pricey, but rich people don’t exactly lust for a Z06.

Mileage: 14/21

Price as Tested: $115,170

Overall 5/5

Perfect on the track, perfect enough on the street. Which is perfect.

It’s difficult to put a price on cynicism in this day and age, but allow me to make a suggestion: $13,900. Four years ago, the newly-introduced Porsche Cayman 3.4S retailed for $58,900. The mechanically similar Boxster 2.7 was $45K flat. That nearly fourteen-grand price difference would have purchased a well-equipped Hyundai Elantra, but at Porsche it got the Cayman buyer a hardtop, which costs less to manufacture than the Boxster’s soft top, and a bored-out engine, which costs exactly the same to make as the small-bore variant.

Although Porsche did condescend to sweeten the crocodile pot with a few extras, such as larger brakes and a more aggressive wheelset, it’s still difficult to not consider the Cayman as the most cynical marketing exercise in history. Of course, Porsche is a company that keeps resetting the bar for cynical exploitation of its overly devoted customers. This mid-engined two-seater is simply another profit-laden reassembly of Stuttgart’s depressingly low-quality watercooled LEGO set, sold for twice what a comparable Japanese or American car would cost.

These are the thoughts that fill my mind as I open the door to PRI’s mildly tuned Cayman S. I’ve just gotten out of their Z4M, a fabulous but flawed roadster that oozes style and enthusiasm from every pore. The Porsche, by contrast, is a boring grey pod with a clattery-sounding frameless door. The old aircooled 911s used to “ting” when the doors closed. It was a solid reminder of the way Porsches used to be built. No longer. The interior is bland, cost-cut, uninteresting. Cynical. Cheap. And then it’s time to drive.

While the Z4 driver sits over the rear axle, looking down the long bonnet in a seating position older than the MG TC, the Cayman’s pilot is cab-forward, with just a mild suggestion of headlamp tunnel visible through the chop-top windshield. It’s not an inspiring view, but it offers uncompromised vision for the driver. Stuff like that matters when you’re pedaling three hundred horsepower down fast roads.

Those ponies, incidentally, are delivered in rather begrudging fashion. There’s nothing even remotely special about the Cayman’s engine. If you want a sensual, exciting Porsche motor, write a check and buy a GT3. The “regular” cars are toneless at low revs and offer just a smidgen of aural excitement as the center-mounted tach passes the italicized “6”. It isn’t a droning Japanese four or hopelessly tacky V-6, but it’s very far from the characterful monster that used to live behind the rear axle of Nine Elevens.

At seventy miles per hour, the BMW has it all over the Porsche. Law-abiding citizens, or the seven-tenths trackday crowd, should feel no regret over purchasing a Z4 over a Cayman, particularly given the solid economic incentives for doing so. In a straight line, the Porsche inevitably slips backwards, and the balky cable shifter doesn’t help matters. It wouldn’t have cost a dime more to make this car a 405-horsepower 3.8, and I find myself repeatedly cursing the name of the now-disgraced Dr. Wendelin Wiedeking as we climb the mountainous roads around upstate New York.

Before I know it, though, the roads start becoming a bit… challenging. Wide sweepers tighten without warning as the short-scale speedometer hovers past the one-half mark. The Z4 is falling out of its element, but the Cayman just keeps getting better. It could use more front tire — every current production Porsche is shipped with a ridiculous amount of “stagger” between the front and rear tread — but the available grip can be accessed right up to the limit. In the midcorner, with the PSM babysitter disconnected, there is a reliable, predictable slide from the tail. I’m adding power at the apex while the BMW is still fidgeting and fussing for grip.

As the miles stretch on, the Cayman maintains a firm brake pedal. Porsche may cut costs everywhere they can, but they have never cut costs when it comes to stopping the car. I’m braking later and later, trusting the car more, and now the Bimmer ahead of me is a fly to be swatted away at my convenience. I can’t do it under power, but at any racetrack I’d show the nose at the next corner and make it stick. The steering is preternaturally good despite power assistance, revealing every line in the pavement but absorbing the worst of the bumps and vibrations before they reach the steering wheel.

As fate would have it, a month after driving PRI’s car I had a chance to drive a nearly identical example at Summit Point’s Main course. In a group filled with M3s, STis, and Evolutions, the Cayman was a subtle superstar, gaining ground in every turn and in every braking zone, never falling too far back, eventually bringing us to the front of the session. A Z4M might have accomplished the same thing, but it would have been a struggle. Like it or not, the Cayman is a truly great car. It isn’t “worth the money” by any scale I can devise, but I’d write a check for one and never think twice.

This is a moment too powerful to be taken lightly, too special to be considered ironically, too vital to examine with any pretense of journalistic impartiality. I am seated behind the wheel of an absolutely perfect, fully-loaded, brand-new Porsche GT2, unwinding the wheel at the exit of Nelson Ledges Road Course’s Carousel turn. Next to me, the car’s owner, entrepreneur and bon vivant David Kim, has planted himself squarely into the GT2’s fixed-back passenger-side bucket, rigid with anticipation. There is traffic ahead, several cars varying from Improved Touring racers to tuned-up street Hondas. It’s time to accelerate, so I press the right pedal into the carpet.

There’s a “whoosh”, and a chatter from the traction control, and the cars between us and the deadly “Kink” turn are rewound past our side windows. We’ve reached one hundred and fifty miles an hour in a matter of seconds. The closing speeds are verging on the insane. As I stand on the ABS and bend the GT2’s nose into the Kink, a wave in the pavement throws the GT2 briefly airborne. The mass of the rear engine waggles, threatens, then touches safely down with a squeak from the tires. Only one car remains, a Porsche 944 Turbo squatting on coilovers and nosing down into the next left-hander.

A well-prepared 944 Turbo is never a trivial road-course opponent, but I know I have the power to swat the Porsche+Audi like an annoying bug on the upcoming front straight. The reasonable thing to do is to wait, to use the throttle. The unreasonable thing to do is to use the carbon-ceramic yellow-caliper Porsche brakes to dive to the inside and lock up from triple digits to the turn in. That’s what I do, placing this $300,000 car door-to-door on the entrance and chattering until the front wheels find grip and we nose into the next right-hander free and clear. Utterly magical.

A few months ago, I tested Switzer Performance’s eight-hundred-horsepower Nissan GT-R at BeaveRun Road Course under rather snowy conditions. BeaveRun is a modern track, designed by Alan Wilson for safety, enjoyment, and reasonable speeds. Nelson Ledges Road Course, by contrast, is the fastest racetrack on the East Coast, a curbless, narrow, frankly deadly throwback to the callous nineteen-fifties. It seems only appropriate that I would test Switzer’s eight-hundred-plus-horsepower Porsche GT2 here. One of the deadliest modern production automobiles available, at the most uncompromising racetrack available.

The “P800” package costs forty thousand dollars on top of the quarter-million dollars required to purchase a stock 2009 GT2. For that money, you receive nothing but an extra three hundred ponies. No wheels, no brakes, no suspension, no sticker package, just the ability to distort time and space with the accelerator. Under conditions that would be so shocking to TTAC readers I am unwilling to detail them completely, I personally recorded a 0-150 time of 10.5 seconds and a 0-170 time of just under fifteen seconds. In a straight line, this Switzer GT2 would thrash a McLaren F1 and find itself just a car length or two behind a Bugatti Veyron, well past three times the double-nickel.

A full day of thrashing at Ledges failed to move the Porsche’s temperature needles into the proverbial danger zone, but it did reveal some limitations in the GT2’s factory setup. This hypercar doesn’t even handle as well as my SCCA-Solo-prepped 2004 Boxster S, thanks to a ridiculous 235-front and 335-rear staggered setup. Left to my own devices, I would fit Hoosier’s R6 tire in 305 width front and 335 rear to maximize speed potential through the Kink and permit me to rotate the car under trail-braking and midcorner throttle.

And while the carbon-ceramic brakes are positively flawless, they are hideously expensive to replace. Porsche should consider offering a steel-brake package to its dedicated track-rat GT2 customers. Potential purchasers should also consider the fact that this car operates at the kind of speeds that, until recently, were the exclusive province of tube-frame GT racers. It’s possible to kill yourself very easily and very quickly in this shark-gilled hyper-Beetle. No amount of factory stability control can cheat the laws of physics involved with a power-to-weight ratio like this.

As a driving experience, as a statement of devil-may-care masculinity, as  a street car, this Switzer-tuned GT2 satisfies at all levels. There’s just one potential issue, one which came to sharp relief in my mind as I observed one of my fellow NASA racers pull his Carrera GT into the paddock at Mid-Ohio a few weeks after my Ledges test. The watercooled Porsche 911 is a familiar shape, available brand-new for seventy-eight grand at your local dealership and as a 1999-model 911 3.4 on eBay for a third of that price. Can any simple variant of the basic theme be special enough to command a pricetag in Lamborghini, Ferrari, or Carrera GT territory?

For me, the answer to the question goes back to that moment at Nelson Ledges. To have the power to break triple digits in moments—to cut the Gordian knot of any traffic ahead by the application of hyperspace thrust—to do all of this in a car which represents the ultimate refinement of the Porsche Turbo philosophy—that’s special enough for me. What makes this car better than the similarly-powered Switzer P800 Nissan GT-R? It’s simple. In the Nissan, the power merely accelerates the scenery; in this Porsche, there’s skill and bravery required to extract the maximum. It’s a challenge, rather than a mere fact, and it makes this simply one of the best performance cars ever created.

The propaganda literature that accompanied the little batch of sleeping pills—complete with a waiver absolving the USAF of all liability—promised that I would awake refreshed and ready to battle desert ninjas. Sure enough, I awoke alert. But mentally, I wasn’t all there. I was fully aware of my full potential and could access it at will, but there was a disconcerting disconnect. No, I didn’t drive the Cayman PDK in this altered state. It’s the same feeling created by the German two-door. Yes, the paddle-shift Cayman is a full-on Porsche. It offers precise handling, a jewel of an engine and magnificent brakes. Yet the Porsche Doppelkupplungsgetriebe stood in the way of the Porker’s legendary man – machine interface. It created dynamic doubts that I’ve never experienced in a Porsche before.

Without a side-by-side comparison with its predecessor or a full membership in the Porsche spotter’s club, it’s virtually impossible to tell the refreshed model form the previous gen. For “Gen-2,” small LED running lights stolen from the latest Audi adorn the front lower grills, and a slightly edgier front end mimics the refreshed Boxster, but exudes its own Cayman-esque character. The mid-engined sports car’s killer app remains its pronounced rear fenders, a nod to the classic Porsche fastback look.

Trying to shove my oversized sack of chemical warfare gear through the Cayman’s rear portal, I discovered that the hardtop Boxster’s hatch trumps the deck shelf of a 911. In fact, the Cayman’s rear holds a surprising amount of stuff—provided you have a deep appreciation for the importance of bondage within fast-moving, G-producing vehicles. And you still have the Cayman’s front storage locker for all those clothes that need to be kept warm by the radiators.

The rest of the Cayman’s interior is a perfectly business-like place to do business, although I wouldn’t say it’s the business. The 1/3 scale ICE buttons are now supplanted by a [larger] touch-screen and voice activation, neither of which should replace a volume knob. But there you go. Via DoppelkungerschnitzelKrokettewunderbarthing, or PDK for those that don’t speak Porschellian.

PDK uses two wet-plate clutches, one for the even gears, and one for the odd gears (which outnumber the even in the seven cog system). By switching between the two clutches during shifting, the power remains uninterrupted. To that end, the system also pre-selects (guesses?) the next gear based on what it thinks you are going to do, based on throttle position, steering angle and inputs from Madame Cleo. Porsche’s PDK is PDQ, delivering faster shifts than Ye Olde F-1 style automated single-clutch systems. At the same time, power delivery is smooth enough for autobox-like ambling in real-world traffic.

So, finally, Porsche gets a version of what RF call’s “the world’s best gearbox”: the DSG paddle shift system found in up-optioned VWs and Audi’s. And it’s not as good.

Before the car warmed up to “za proper operating temp-er-a-choor,” the PDK system clunked a bit here and there. Five minutes later, everything synced. Cross-town commuting proved a breeze, even a joy, as the PDK swapped clutches and gears seamlessly. I luxuriated in the Cayman’s controlled cell of calmness. Yet something was amiss.

Perhaps those of you who imbibe in medical marijuana could add more color to this feeling. It felt as if there was a layer of frosted glass in between me and the magic of Porsche. As I sought out the autobahn to open up the crocodile named coupe, I shrugged off this disquieting quietude. Perhaps the car’s animal magnetism would return with a little, shall we say, prompting.

At 250kmh, terminal velocity in a headwind, the novocain remained. MIA: visceral pleasures of the the 911 and/or Boxster’s instant punch, thrust and parry. Mind you, there was nothing wrong with the Cayman PDK’s performance per se. Nichts. Yet the delivery of its adrenalin-producing acceleration lagged a couple 1/10ths of a second behind the experience. Yes, it’s true: Porsche now has its own perception gap. Winding down the switchbacks to my home in Piesport, the temporal disconnect extended slightly, as I negotiated first gear turns and 100kmh straightaway thrusts.

I welcome the PDK. As this website has proclaimed, DSG-style double clutch systems are the future for all automatics. The old Tiptronic walks off in deep shame. Yet I will still pass on this latest gee-whiz gizmo. The fog of war that the PDK creates in autobahn missiles hinders the sheer joy of piloting one of the best sports cars in existence. Should the PDK find its way into the fast, fat, and relaxed sedans of other manufacturers, I’m sure I will be five-starring it all over the pages of TTAC. Yet in a machine so precise and honed as the Cayman, it’s either new software or back to the old hardware. Which, as a clear-headed, passionate pistonhead, suits me just fine.

In theory, a dual clutch gearbox offers drivers the best of both worlds: a corner-carving-compliant paddle shift system (complete with computer-controlled, rev-matching throttle blipping) and a waft-enabling automatic gearbox. As developed by the BorgWarner, the DSG version lifted a well-sorted VW Golf GTI into automotive Valhalla. Porsche fans arched their collective eyebrows, anticipating the day when Stuttgart would perform a similar transformation for the world’s only best everyday supercar: the 911. Porsche Doppelkupplung (PDK) is here, attached to the model’s 900th evolution. Is the system finally ready for hammer time?

For 2009, Porsche has increased the size of the 911′s air intakes, added LED lights and reshaped the side mirrors and rear lights. Sitting in the driver’s seat, the airy greenhouse and the perfectly comfortable seats continue to define the car: a machine that blurs the line between sports car and GT. Properly, judiciously equipped (wheels, tires, drivetrain, suspension) the 911 can satisfy either buyer, or both.

I recall my excitement back in 2002 when I bought one of the first 911’s with cup holders. Tempus fugit. Yes, the big news for the latest Porsche 911 is convenience. One could heat the seats in a 911 in recent years, but now you can heat the steering wheel and cool the seats– if you have the dough. Frustrated technophiles no longer need to invest big bucks at their local stereo store to Bluetooth their phone or Pod their i– at a price.  Important options like Porsche stability management and bi-xenon lights are now standard– while almost everything else isn’t (self-dimming mirrors will still set you back almost $400). Leather here, leather there- spend some time on the Porsche configurator and you will be amazed how many VW shares you can bankroll much money you can blow with the click of a mouse.

Thanks to direct fuel injection, the “base” 911′s engine output rises to a healthy 345 horsepower. With 288 lb. ft. of torque underfoot, the Carrera powers to 60 mph in 4.5 seconds. The new-for-’09 exhaust system adds a not entirely pleasing throaty baritone at low RPMs– that morphs into a mind-bending banshee wail at higher elevations. The 911′s brake feel is more intuitive and less wooden in the 2009 version, although the Porker’s stopping distances are scarcely credible regardless of model year. The suspension settings feel a tad softer the it predecessor, which makes for a less jarring ride but adds some unexpected and unwanted understeer during hard cornering.

PDK stands for Porsche Delight Killer. Sad but true: the German automaker’s engineered most of the fun out of it. Like ye olde Tiptronic, the PDK really likes to upshift. I started out normally from rest at an intersection. Before I reached the other side, PDK had shifted twice. By the time I reached 30 mph, I was in seventh; I felt like I was driving a Trabant with an aromatic leather interior. PDK behaves like a student project designed to extract maximum mpg from what used to be a high performance sports car.

Back when I drove the new BMW M3, I wondered why I needed all those shift modes. Now that I’ve driven PDK, I longed for a few of those shift modes. Porsche gives you one, otherwise, its paddle for yourself. To make matters worse, PDK is not particularly PDQ. Upshifts are not noticeable but downshifts are lurchy and slow, even when performed manually. On top of all this, the ergonomics of the steering wheel controls are awful. Again, upshifting feels OK. But downshifting requires that you almost reach behind the wheel for the change. Not to put too fine a point on it, PDK ruined my 911 experience.

As with all its other basic shortcomings, Porsche offers a fix– for more geld. Check the box for the Porsche Active Suspension Management and the Sport Chrono Pack and Gruss Got you have another shift and suspension mode. Supposedly, the PDK then offers a sportier interface (I did not get to sample it). Am I the only one who finds it peculiar that you need to spend nearly $4k for a sport button in a 911?. This combination is also the key to launch control mode, which sounds deliciously self destructive and similar to how I used to drive my dad’s Chevy Caprice- stand on the brakes and the accelerator simultaneously and pray that your rear axle doesn’t hop off.

The Porsche 911 is one of my all time favorite rides, and the new 911 is improved in so many ways. However, again, the PDK pretty much wiped the smile off my face. It’s only a matter of time before Porsche fixes their gearboxes’ deficiencies. Meanwhile, if you want to drive a 911 like you stole it, and stop thieves from doing the same, the manual gearbox is still your best not to say only option.

Aesthetically, the GT2 is equally close to flawless. It's no lime green Gallardo South Beach Stunta; the top-of-the-line 911 is more like the Armani-wearing MBA who heads to the gym after work. Witness the GT2's curvaceous fender flares, ram-air equipped whale tail and fierce 19" wheels. The "regular" speed bits from the Turbo keep the GT2 grounded in reality, especially when finished in Carrera white. 

Too bad the GT2's macho front clip's smiley speed hole gives the uber-coupe a steroid-infused Pokemon-on-wheels persona. As the umpteenth Cayenne snout indicates, The Sultans of Stuttgart need to hire a designer with a talent for rhinoplasty, stat. 

Inside, Porsche turned to Isaac Hayes' suede-lined Superfly Caddy for inspiration. Decadent Alcantara is the dominating theme of this big-body Porker. Velvety goodness envelops everything: the wheel, shifter, seats and door panels are draped with the goods. The kids may cry pimp, but the GT2's interior upgrades foreshadows the grippiness to come. The unique carbon fiber seat frames make for God-like thrones worthy of adolescent admiration.

Otherwise, the GT2 is your run of the mill Porsche 911, albeit one loaded-up with a decent BOSE blaster, straightforward satellite navigation and an insightful Sport Chronograph atop the dash. The integrated package- toy-laden, high dollar luxo-street whip seamlessly blended with a purpose built racer– extends and maintains Porsche's rep as THE everyday supercar.

Appearances do not deceive. The GT2's easy action clutch, informative but effortless tiller and compassionate suspension tuning works wonders on the street. Road noise is minimal, even with barely legal Michelins underfoot. The ride's so compliant that Porsche engineers obviously bribed the laws of physics with their PASM active suspension dampening. All of which translates into a trip to Costco with the almighty Camry's spiritual blessings. That is, if you were so blasé about the affair. 

Bring Zuffenhausen's famous soldier to attention and things get serious.

The steering is the GT2's trump card. As the speed increases, the helm transforms from tame to tango. While there's nothing particularly wrong with the Turbo's tiller, everything's right with the GT2's steering. Sublime is just a word. If you can't feel exactly what the wheels are doing, check your arms for needle marks. Credit weight savings from the GT2's rear wheel drive configuration.

Cornering is predictable to the limit– which you have no business breaching on a public road. The supple ride masks the GT2's lack of appreciable body roll. Even with rear-wheel-only motivation, the Porker's foot-long Michelin rubber has Quattro-esque stick. The GT2 rockets out of the hole like a drag star, holding your conscience in automotive arachibutyrophobia.

The launch is soft, but the tach jumps when the turbos kick out the jams. All wheel-drive be damned; a trip to sixty takes all of 3.6 seconds. Quick up shifts and the nicely spaced gearing keeps the GT2 in boost country, provided one's state of mind is as track-ready as the car. And there's no running out of breath to the (advertised) 204 mph top speed. 

The GT2 absolutely begs to be driven faster, rewarding the driver with smooth throttle and steering inputs. Friction-friendly ceramic brake rotors ensure the same feeling, just in a different direction. Most importantly, in classic 911 fashion, the GT2 feels happy at any speed. This is classic Porsche engineering, something its Italian counterparts just don't understand. And probably never will.

There's no doubt the 911 family is a polished grouping, with the stones to justify its price tag. Expect for maybe its commander-in-chief. The sky-high GT2 begs the question: what's in it for me?  The GT2's exclusive titanium exhaust is a long-standing Z06 hallmark; its performance gain over the ultimate Chevy is mostly from super gooey tires. Plus, there's no turbo lag with a 7.0-liter torque monster.

And, near Ferrari's price point, paying 60 grand over a 911 Turbo for flared fenders, two fewer driven wheels and a modest power bump doesn't jive. The comparable F430 amazes. 911 loyalists always counter with the magic Porsche factor: inspiring intangibles attributes that turn the faithful into blind worshipers, and everyone else into respectful admirers of limited production and fat fenders.

Then again, what's wrong with that? Not much to me, since the 911 GT2 makes a strong case for less being (worth) more.

 
(Special thanks to Mr. Steve Cela for seat time)

So, as the concierge squealed around the corner, he gunned the Cayenne's engine. An attractive V6 rasp echoed off the concrete parking garage walls at the Wynn Las Vegas. Crisply creased with unnaturally angry Porsche eyes, the Midnight Black Metallic model created a strong initial impression. And then, it turned towards the side, and I shuddered. The Cayenne's rear is displeasingly plump and oddly rounded. The new blacked-out glass at the bottom of the rear window is a rare example of Porsche de-evolution; its angularity makes a bad design worse. 

Our tester's interior was overwhelmingly beige. Only a black center stack– with a stereo face from 1986– relieved the Saharan color scheme. Sisters VW Touareg and Audi Q7 both have the Cayenne licked in terms of switchgear, material choices and general cabin appeal. That Porsche can still offer a vehicle at this price point without Bluetooth or iPod connectivity is testimony to the brand's snob appeal, rather than Porsche's ability to compete head-on with its upmarket peers.

Once you get used to the Cayenne's monotone color scheme and lack of toys, you begin to appreciate Stuttgartian subtleties. The Cayenne's buttons, knobs, and dials may be annoyingly small and fiddly, but they're all ideally situated for performance-oriented pilots. Better yet, there's nothing overly-complicated to distract you the business at hand– although saddling-up on expensive options might solve that "problem."

On the road, the base Cayenne proved stable and agile, just like the much cheaper VW Touareg. The Porsche's 3.6-liter direct injection 290bhp V6 motivated the 4949 lbs. truck adequately; the zero to 60 sprint takes only 7.5 seconds. Porsche tuned the exhaust to mimic their flat sixes, but they only receive a participation ribbon in that regard.  

The Cayenne's long pedal travel and delayed throttle response added to the building suspicion I was driving an expensive VW, not a [relatively] cheap Porsche. The Cayenne's mileage-seeking tranny always started in second gear, guaranteeing a take-off reminiscent of a Wagoneer (or an over-loaded 727). You can select first gear from the Tiptronic. In traffic, that gets old real quick.

In general, on road, the Cayenne feels like it was designed with only a vague memory of the 911, as if the icon were a faded poster in the closet of the Porsche SUV department.

Leaving Las Vegas, I headed to Tikaboo Valley. Rumbling over the guard rail entrance to the 22.5 mile trail, I doubted Porsche's lumbering lummox could redeem itself. By the end of the first mile, I was looking in the glove box for a Papal dispensation.

The Cayenne's delayed throttle response made power modulation on bumps and sand a doddle; I could feed the six the perfect amount of gas at the perfect pace. Porsche Traction Management and the Cayenne's steel spring multi-link suspension made short work of washboard surfaces, deep sand, scree and dead jackrabbits. Flying down dirt roads, the Cayenne's six-speed transmission was always in the right gear. I was no longer a prat with a Bluetooth earpiece; I was Stig Blomqvist in the Dakar.

The harder and faster you pushed the Cayenne on the fast dirt sections, the more sure-footed it became. The Cayenne is as unflappable in the dirt as a Cayman is on the track. In the really rough sections, the Cayenne's low-range with the lockable differentials allowed absurd bouldering shenanigans. Climbing to the top of Tikaboo Peak, the Cayenne could do no wrong.

Mission accomplished. Point taken. The Porsche Cayenne, even in its simplest form, embodies all the passion and engineering skill of a 911. But it's a fervor rooted in the deserts, plains and mountains of Africa, not the middle of the Nürburgring. The Cayenne's fast and fun on dirt roads, and poised and capable scrambling over river washes and steep climbs. It's a damn shame the vast majority of Cayenne owners will never discover this vehicle's true essence. Because otherwise, cash cow or not, the Cayenne makes no sense.

To placate the purists, the Sultans of Stuttgart have made the GTS a mucho macho machine. Wheel arches that once sheltered Bambi's friends are now stuffed with 21" tires. The GTS shares its nose with the range-topping Turbo– continuing to prove that you can't make a silk purse out of sow's snout. Yes, well, the GTS' no-cost optional rear spoiler is pure Porsche: stylish, slick and sick. The quad pipes, not so much.

Inside, there's nothing to remind GTS drivers that they're the something wicked that this way cometh. A meaty steering wheel pretty much completes the list. I was expecting Porsche to go the whole hog (so to speak) and fit some honest-to-Gott racing seats. Perhaps that's where the keepers of the flame drew the line; the chairs offer nothing more than a little extra bolstering (front and back) and Alcantara inserts, just waiting for juice box dribbles and Diet Coke debacles. 

Kick-over the GTS' V8 and the next time you do so you'll be channeling the WWE's announcer. Initially, it's not so much a rumble as a whole lot of noise– which had me wondering if the GTS was firing on all cylinders. And then the vario-cam plus powerplant settled into the "outer space is really big" sub-woofer special effect, ready for a couple of infantile brap, braps on the go-pedal.

Obviously enough, the Cayenne GTS is quick. Should you wish to blast the beast from zero to sixty miles per hour (hey, you're paying for it), the German SUV will oblige your accelerative aspirations in 5.7 (manual) or 6.1 (auto) seconds. That's either a half second faster than the Cayenne S or, according to Car and Driver, not. Anyway, talk about motor authority; in full kick-down, the GTS' mill issues an entirely purposely growl, winding out to the redline with unrelenting determination. Followed by a tiny upshift beep. Oh, please.

Journalists have seized on the fact that the GTS comes with a stick (as does the base V6). Our GTS didn't; the Porsche guy says his store sells fewer manuals than an iPod dealer. Although reports indicate that the Porsche's six-speed self-shifter is a sloppy cog swapper, I was left lusting for an oar to row. Yes, once again, the Cayenne's gearing sucks.

Despite [new] direct injection technology, the GTS remains insensitive to anything but major inputs. It might be OK for a Saturn slushbox to rethink on the fly, but when you're shelling out $70k (and the rest), you don't want a vehicle that shifts down a gear, then shifts down again. You can use the Porsche truck's Tiptronic buttons to manage the problem, but the GTS is supposed to be a luxury sport SUV. [Note to self: did I just say that?]

The problem is, still, weight. The GTS tips the scales at a kaffe und kuchen-loving 4949 lbs. With Porsche unable or unwilling to ditch the SUV's phenomenal off-road capability, the boffins had no choice but to gear the GTS for mileage. While Car and Driver hails the Porker's "400 mile fuel range," the EPA reckons the GTS (auto) gets 13/18 mpg. Yeah right. Mix gas and air like you just don't care and you're looking at single digits. To achieve S-Class throttle response, well, how low can you go?

At least the brute handles impeccably, in a "747 doing a barrel roll" kinda way (true story). As long as you keep the GTS' handling Nannies on duty, you'll only run out of grip if you're stupid enough not to change over to winter tires (special order, big ticket). And although my lack of "ass calibration" (Porsche guy's term) prevented me from discerning any difference in any of the GTS' three suspension modes, no matter. The ride quality on those jumbo donuts is fully commuter compatible.  

I also appreciate the fact the GTS' elevated seating position allows you do things on the highway that no low-slung sports car could/should do. But I'm still left wondering if the forthcoming four-door Porsche Panamera wasn't the family car Porsche should have built in the first place.

And I still prefer the Infinit FX45 for high-end SUV fast-driving fun. [Note to self: read previous note to self.] But the Porsche Cayenne GTS is easily the best fully off-road capable sport truck money can buy– including the less dramatically styled, lag-afflicted Cayenne Turbo. Put another way, the Porsche Cayenne GTS is the world's most-fire-resistant-paper-hat-on-wheels. Now that's saying something; although I'm not exactly sure what.

Walking up to my loaded lender, I realized that the more things stay the same, the more they change. The Turbo still wanders the line between “normal” and “steroidal” with delicious subtlety, advertising its alpha status with the kind of nonchalance one associates with closeted superheroes– and TV serial killers.

If natural selection dictates aero-friendly styling, artificial selection demands the return of the bug eyes. And there they are. Meanwhile, the Turbo moves the styling needle towards the temper of the times: Bauhaus bling. Clock the split-level induction ducts in the rear quarters and the new, “Audi-inspired” LED’s in the snout.

Nineteen inch two-tone rims (revealing epic brake discs) and a subdued spoiler indicate function, while Bette Davis’ eyes and Bettie Page’s hips project the iconic form. The Turbo’s wheels are by far the most “distinctive” yet offered as stock. To my eyes the fifteen-spoke Ferrari-esque pentagrams are the only miscue in an otherwise perfectly judged stealth wealth gestalt.

Open the Turbo’s door and the six figure price tag is well represented. Illuminated door sills greet, leather aromas intoxicate. The Turbo’s build quality and material choices offer haptic harridans Teutonic titillation. All the buttons and switchgear click with infinite precision, nestled within their intuitive homes. The Turbo’s low-slung sport seats hug your hide while the side bolsters holster your spare tire. Digital ICE rends Floyd asunder through thirteen channels. While Dr. B’s boom box isn’t as orchestral as Lexus’ Levinson unit, Turbo owners won’t care until at least their third oil change.

Twist the Ned Flanders-friendly ignition and life breathes into the miraculous mill through twin-intercooled turbines. (THAT’S what you paid to hear.) The horizon takes on a bi-xenon hue as you slot first. Loop your thumbs over the spokes at nine and three, mash the gas and the world begins to look like the Matrix. The seats give a little before they don’t; keeping you locked and loaded.

The last Turbo I sampled was of the calf-master floor-mount clutch variety. It provided an ideal setup for three pedal track tangos, but felt like three left feet when negotiating a city grid. The new Stiletto-savvy pedal positioning and lighter clutch uptake make pothole-piloting and Honda parking a piece of piss. Yes, well, even a gentle tickle on the go-pedal provides an unequivocal indication that this car is built to be driven hard and put away wet. 

As enthusiasts of a certain age will tell you, waiting for big blowers to spool up sucks. I’m pleased to report that Porsche’s professors nixed the problem in the low-rpm bud by blending Variable Turbine Geometry (VTG) and VarioCam Plus. VTG modifies the planes directing exhaust gases to the turbine so that low rev launches are fully spooled. Those planes then change as the big tach needle in front of you flickers by, keeping optimum boost primed. VarioCam Plus keeps the twist on tap through two different cam profiles; city schlepping and Bahn burning. 

The new Turbo Porker’s 3.6-liter flat six stables 480 apocalyptic horses. When dispatched, over 500 pounds of twist try to eat Mother Earth. In manual trim, rest to sixty arrives almost before it arrives: 3.7 seconds. Endure cries of wuss, and the Tiptronic S gets there .3 seconds earlier. To keep all that power from going up in ZR-rated Holy Smoke, an all new electronic controlled multidisc AWD system ensures forward motion.

There are very few cars that mind meld with the driver as quickly and easily as the new 911 Turbo. Look, point, accelerate. Wipe stupid grin from face and repeat. I’m told there’s a bit of understeer out there, somewhere. Didn’t see it. In fact, this car is so easy to drive at such stupendous speeds that within minutes I was thinking Matthew “Schumacher” had a nice ring to it. When your ego gets the better of you (and it will) Porsche Stability Management (PSM) steps in to save your bacon. 

The new 911 Turbo is the fastest, friendliest and safest evolution yet– at least until the Turbo S arrives. Why in the world anyone would want to make this car any faster is beyond me. But then this is the company that has done more than any other to ensure that well-heeled speed freaks can procreate. That is, if their Porker’s ever parked long enough for them to bother.

The previous Cayenne Turbo was styled by the same people who train (inject? genetically engineer?) WWF wrestlers. The '08 model is even less in touch with its feminine side. In fact, the new Turbo's mammoth grill looks set to swallow a Miata whole. In the rear, quad pipes jutting out from my tester's prison wall rear made an interesting contrast to the trailer hitch ($630) located between them. The Porker's 21" wheels ($4145) had me checking my fillings ($375).

The Cayenne Turbo ($93,700) comes standard with plenty of modern conveniences: satellite radio, heated seats and steering wheel, dual zone climate control, etc. For slightly less than the price of a Kia Rio, your dealer will gladly upgrade his profit your comfort to the requisite extreme. How about a cool looking cargo management system ($590 or the same price as 118 bungee cords)? The panoramic sunroof ($3,900) is a must-see. But I'm not so sure about the rear camera and park distance control ($1680); I'd rather pay a bystander $5 each time I need help backing up.

The Cayenne Turbo's nav system had me wondering about the price of tour guides. I swear: Werner Von Braun couldn't operate this system. After my driving partner and I became momentarily disoriented (lost), he fiddled with the 39 buttons surrounding the nav screen for a good ten minutes. We eventually gave up and retraced our missteps.

As you might expect from a German automaker that came to luxury trucks via purpose built sports cars, the Cayenne Turbo has a few lessons yet to learn. Although the leather makes the grade, the plastic switchgear isn't pleasant at this price and the erstwhile operation of the Cayenne's fold-down rear seats is maddening. Continuing your OCD RTFM education from last week's Bimmer review…

First, squeeze the cleverly concealed latch that allows you remove the rear headrests and throw the neck savers on the floor. Next, pull on the back of the rear seat cushions, starting on the driver's side, until the bench stands upright. Now fold the seat back towards the front– oops, not enough clearance. Open the front door, move the front seats forward. Ignoring the effect on front legroom, fold down the seats [as] flat [as they can go].   

On the flipside, Porsche engineers get Mehta-esque mad props for making the "refreshed" ‘08 Cayenne Turbo even faster than its preposterously pacey predecessor. Using direct injection engine technology (applied across the Cayenne line), Porsche's boffins boosted the Turbo's horsepower to 500 and upped torque to 516 ft.-lbs. I'm afraid it must be said: that's an excremental load of grunt for an SUV.  

Forward thrust is appropriately brutal. The Turbo's weight actually adds to the experience– in the same sense that an F18 Hornet wouldn't be half as much fun blasting off a carrier deck if it weighed half as much. Unlike the outgoing Cayenne Turbo S, blower lag is no longer an issue. Although there's a momentary delay as the afterburners light-up, the twin turbos are wonderfully responsive to both a wide open throttle and cruise control. As you'd hope, the anchors are automotive arresting wires.

Acronym-starved rivet counters (and the Pendleton District Camera Club) will delight in the knowledge that The Sultans of Stuttgart have blessed the PASM-equipped Cayenne Turbo with yet another automotive acronym: PDCC or Porsche Dynamic Chassis Control. So now upmarket truck drivers get a side order of active stabilizers (on the front and rear axles) with their infinitely adjustable adaptive dampers. With both systems engaged (or at least going steady), you'd swear you were driving a VW GTI with sandbags in the back.  

Again, the Cayenne Turbo's fuel economy sucks: 12 city, 19 highway, and a lot less when driven by the type of person bound to buy one of these astounding luxobarges. But hey, it's better than it was– only the EPA's changed the testing procedure so it doesn't seem that way and anyway how many people really care? About as many people who've taken this thing off-road.    

If you're ready to party like it's 1999, the 2008 Porsche Cayenne Turbo will gargle gas, accelerate, brake and handle better than any of its competition– you know, if there was any. It's an extremely capable, utterly unique and completely indefensible vehicle. Nice one Porsche.

C’mon, why build a 5500 pound truck that can accelerate like a sports car, ford streams, plug mud, climb and descend precipitous inclines AND provide upmarket MILF’s with a leather-lined suburban schlepper? Yes, yes; Porker’s porker is a hit. The Cayenne has dumped enough cash into the German automaker's corporate coffers to finance family plans to re-conquer VW and, thus, the world. But even if you set aside the SUV’s corrosive effect on the Porsche brand, you still have to wonder if this whole Cayenne thing is nothing more than porcine lipstick application.

The answer depends on two questions. First, would you drive a $112k SUV off-road? If you’re ready, willing and able to throw Porsche’s mad bad beast into streams and mud, over stones and sand, through forests and Wadis; to scratch your precious paint and dent your fantastic fenders, then I’ve got no beef with this truck. The Cayenne Turbo S can triple digit down a gravel road as easily as a Honda Fit can squeeze into an urban parking space. It can raise itself up, detach its front and rear anti-roll bars and overcome a medium sized boulder. Even without the Advanced Offroad Technology Package, the Cayenne Turbo S rocks. Literally.

Second, if I tell you that a German vehicle can blast from zero to sixty in 4.8 seconds and top out at 168mph; is that just about everything you need to hear? The Ford Mustang GT500 proves there are plenty of wealthy pistonheads for whom cornering ability plays second fiddle to the thunderous timpani of massive straight line thrust. If you’re a well-heeled truck-loving fool who lives for foot-stomping, neck-snapping yee-haws, the Cayenne Turbo S is good to go like Hell. And while the Turbo S doesn’t relish corners any more than a K100RS with a suitcase strapped to its ass, it is without doubt the least likely of its ilk to fall off the road should you be brave stupid enough to carry even a small portion of its considerable speed into a tight corner.  

In case you hadn’t guessed, neither of these talents is enough to endear the Cayenne Turbo S to your humble reviewer. When I go off-road, I want a relatively simple and inexpensive machine that I can thrash and stash without paying the body shop cash. When I want to have my vision blurred by acceleration-squeeshed eyeballs, I want a small, light, low-slung machine that can corner like a Boxster S. And if I want a fast SUV, I want a beast that beams me from A to B in seamless, mindless luxury. This the Cayenne Turbo does not do.

Mind you, the Turbo S’ cabin is as far from a torture chamber as the Waihua spa at the Maui Ritz. There are Saville Row tailors who couldn't match the fit and finish of the truck’s fragrant Alcantara headlining and leather-wrapped dash. The toys are all present and accounted for, save a rear seat DVD system but including a BOSE blaster fully capable of drowning out your passengers’ screams (as they learn that a Boeing 747 isn’t the only behemoth that can fly). On the down low, the Cayenne Turbo S’ switchgear is a bit small, cheap and not so cheerful; a reflection of both parts bin cost saving and Bauhaus chic.

But the real trouble lies with the model’s engine – gearbox combo. As you might expect from a 2.5 ton vehicle with a turbo-charged V8, turbo lag is something of an issue. Even with 530 foot pounds of torque underfoot, it’s entirely possible to catch the Cayenne Turbo S’ six-speed slushbox off-guard and bog down. Much of the blame rests with the ECU’s struggle to reconcile bonkers speed, personal driving habits and the need to eke out more than ten real world mpg (e.g. it always starts off in second gear). Sometimes she’ll kick down two gears, sometimes one, sometimes none. Bottom line: wafters need not apply.

The Turbo S meets or beats any other luxury SUV in terms of off-road prowess and on-road élan. But it lacks that one ingredient that would make it an unimpeachable daily driver and a better vehicle than the magisterial Range Rover or the hot-to-trot ML63 AMG: mechanical harmony. Come the March refresh, we’ll learn whether or not Porsche's boffins have somehow fixed the Cayenne Turbo S' powerplant's inherent limitations. 

Don’t ask me why Porsche suddenly decided to upgrade the Boxster S’ 3.2-liter powerplant with the Cayman S’s 3.4-liter 295hp short stroke flat six. Other than its sexy fastback and slightly stiffer chassis, the Cayman’s extra 15 horses and 15 ft.-lbs. of twist provided the primary justification for stumping-up the $6k differential between the ragtop roadster and its hard-topped twin. Now, why bother? Yes, the Boxster S’ roof generates wind roar at speed. Yes, its body flexes more in the corners (not that you’d notice in any absolute sense). But once you’ve joined the Boxster S club, you won’t spend a femtosecond wishing you’d bought the more expensive whippet snapper.

You will, however, wish you had more road. Unless you’ve got regular access to 50 miles of lightly trafficed, gently policed winding mountain tarmac, you’ll run out of corners long before you run out of desire to wind out the Boxster S’ silky sonorous six. Although there was nothing wrong with the way the “old” 987 carved-up the twisties, the incrementally more powerful Boxster S turns the speed-crazed sublime into the violently ridiculous. Porsche’s roadster is, finally, quick enough to scare you. Until it doesn’t. Which is even scarier. Until it isn’t.

The new model owes much of its aggressive nature to the Cayman’s borrowed gearbox. The shorter first and second gear ratios all but eliminate the Boxster S’ pre-Variocam lag, giving the German roadster Tyson-esque punch a moment after git-go. Second gear is especially useful; in the “instantaneous and abundant thrust” sense of the word. Third gear is relentless; in the ”you’ll be sleeping in that cell over there with Bubba” sense of the word. Equally important, you can now buy your S with 19” wheels. Unless you order Porsche’s pricey Active Stability Management, the resulting ride is as stiff as a triple Stoli straight up. And twice as intoxicating.

In dry conditions, the Boxster’s mid-engine balance, masterful suspension and fat rubber make it virtually impossible to break the rear end loose— leaving you free to explore cornering limits enjoyed by drivers of stratospherically-priced cars prepared by Maranello’s satanic mechanics. If and when you over-cook it, Porsche Active Stability Management steps in and saves your bacon. Switch off the handling Nanny and overwhelming rear grip is still less likely than securing a Manhattan cab in a 3am snowstorm. Drift kings need not apply, but the new Boxster S [still] isn’t about tire smoking machismo. It’s about tripping the light fantastic.

In fact, the Boxster S’ competition better hope that the old saw about a car only being as good as its brakes is wrong. As improbable as it sounds, the new S’ brakes are even better fear reducers than the previous binders. Porsche drivers familiar with the company’s curious clutch engagement now face acclimatization to the Boxster’s initially touchy brakes. It’s worth it; once mastered, the four-piston aluminum monobloc anchors (with new vacuum brake boosters) provide infinitely variable, endlessly reliable retardation.

And one more thing: once the revs crest three grand, the Boxster S’ raspy engine note hardens into something not entirely unlike a jet turbine. It’s nowhere near as addictive as the old BMW M5’s burble and roar, but then an unquenchable penchant for Chateau Margaux is less compelling than a crack cocaine habit (if equally pricey). Now that the M’s V10 sounds like a diesel delivery van/F1 racer, there’s only one thing better than an allegro concerto con Boxster S: a Boxster S fitted with a MAXFLOW exhaust. Even without the decibel enhancing (kill the spare cat) mods, if you like sex and violins, the Boxster S is your car.

Now more than ever, the higher horsed Boxster S is a more entertaining machine than the 911. Porsche’s $50k and [WAY] up convertible roadster is simply a more willing and nimble dance partner than the company’s ass-engined slot car. The new engine makes the Boxster S (and its Cayman cousin) only marginally slower than a base Carrera, so the 911′s diddy rear seats and snob value are its only advantage. Put another way, there’s no good reason not to buy a Boxster S (kids when you’re caning?) and use the difference to reduce your monthly nut.

It’s a shame that it’s taken Stuttgart a decade to fit their mid-engined marvel with an engine capable of living up to its phenomenal chassis, remarkable suspension, peerless steering and world class brakes. Oh, and for the record, it’s still not enough. I’ve driven a 400hp Cayman. In any language, that car is the very definition of horsing around. Boxster brokers: you’ve broken the barrier. Now bring it on.

As I struggled to reclaim my high-speed equilibrium, I wondered how I’d ever decided that the Porsche Cayman S was underpowered.  If the mid-engined marvel was so acceleratively challenged, why was I dabbing at the stoppers almost as often as the go pedal?  If I had extra power underfoot, what the Hell would I do with it?  I’d either have to drive faster— a scarcely credible concept at the time— or find another road with big-ass sweepers.  The Cayman is a sports car, not a GT.  All my attempts to mind meld with the Cayman’s mojo foundered on the rocks of personal paranoia.

And then, slowly, my brain formed the neurological pathways needed to parse the information the Cayman S was delivering to my hands, feet, body, eyes, ears and nose (I love the smell of smoking brakes in the morning).  Although I couldn’t string together two coherent corners, I began to see that it wasn’t impossible.  Although I couldn’t get her out of third gear, I stopped trying. As my faith in the Cayman’s stoppers grew, as the little tin top swept away my go-faster cobwebs and locked me into the now, all of those bad feelings disappeared.  I was getting faster and safer.  Confidence was high.

If you’ve never sampled a Cayman S (or a Boxster or Boxster S), here’s what happens.  For the first dozen miles or so, you think it's far too easy to drive for a “real” sports car.  Porsche's boffins have weighted all the major controls for delicacy and precision, rather than heft.  The helm answers with mindless ease.  The clutch action is lighter than a pedal-operated trash can (and plays like a slide trombone).  The brakes shed speed without apparent effort.  Once you get acclimatized, the Cayman S loses its chick car shtick… and starts to resemble an adrenalin-crazed hunting dog bouncing on its paws, waiting for that blissful moment when it can finally realize its genetic imperative.

And so it does.  The harder you thrash the Cayman S, the more sense it makes.  The car suddenly gets fitter, better, stronger, happier.  You forget the Cayman’s incredible lightness of being, and concentrate on its incredible fleetness of foot.  (There are four-term congressmen who can’t change direction as fast than this car.)  You don’t need any special skills to make the Cayman dance.  You can accelerate, point, turn.  Brake, turn, accelerate.  Turn, accelerate, accelerate.  Cha cha cha.  Unlike a Corvette C6 or BMW Z4M, the Cayman is the perfect partner; always ready to subsume its personality to flatter yours.  In that sense, it's also the perfect teacher.  With its reptilian grip, unflappable suspension, seat belt imprinting brakes and benign limits, you don’t have to get it right to A) live B) have fun and live. Just like the Boxster and Boxster S, the Cayman S makes you a better driver without ever punishing you for being a bad one.

So where’s the downside to this mid-engine merengue?  Power.  Yes, I know; I began by confessing a misbegotten urge for additional oomph.  Well I was right the first time.  There is no question whatsoever that the Cayman’s engine bogs down at low revs— especially compared to the seamless thrust delivered from 3000rpm to the all-too-easily discovered rev limiter.  First gear is a bit of a bun fight, and the bottom end of third and fourth forces you to either ease into or fully commit to speed– rather than just lunging at it whenever you like (as you can in Variocamland).  Another 100 horses spread peanut butter thick across the rev range would certainly prove helpful in this regard, Wendelin.

The second complaint is the car’s lack of soul.  The Cayman is a thoroughly German sports car.  In other words, it’s all about the driving, not the car.  Yes, you become one with the motorized scalpel that transforms you into a corner carving God.  But there’s nothing about the Cayman that tugs at your heart strings.  The new shape makes a valiant attempt; but it ends up being handsome rather than svelte.  The new engine sound is magnificent— in a brutally efficient sort of way. The interior’s controls are ergonomically sound, but undersized and deployed without a hint of the spizzarkle that makes a Ferrari ghetto fabulous.  In short, the Porsche Cayman S is nothing less– and strangely nothing more– than the ultimate driving machine.      

[Porsche provided the vehicle reviewed, insurance, taxes and a tank of gas.] 

The internationally-known Porsche tuning-haus offers an extensive selection of 911 eye candy. Case in point: our tester’s front and rear valances. The RUF-exclusive bodywork is deeper and more forward thinking than stock, giving the 911 an altogether keener stance– and virtually guaranteeing some expensive scuff repair. RUF’s five-spokes are mercifully, purposefully flat and, mission critically, a half inch wider at both ends. Back in bling world, the RUF appearance package adds a bi-plane spoiler sporting both painted and exposed carbon-fiber wings. Like, awesome.
RUF’s retina-scorching red runner may attract more attention than a stock Carrera, or Adriana Lima, but metrosexual Teutonic purists rejoice: our tester’s interior upgrades were limited to a new RUF-embossed airbag cover and heat-soak friendly aluminum shift knob. Of course, the RUF's meat and potatoes lie under that spoiler. It’s all about the Bauhaus blower: die Kompressor uber alles.

American consumers buy into the experience via RUF’s modish Dallas digs. There, in search of Biblical power, donor engines are rent asunder; RUF moves the legendary flat-six’s compression ratio into boost-country via thicker head gaskets. Unlike other tuners, RUF developed their Kompressor package from scratch, carefully mating Porsche’s Germanic precision to the raw grunt of a boost-fed American dragster. While only a fully trained and licensed 911 mechanic understands the mechanical purity of RUF’s engineering, there’s not a driver alive who won’t appreciate the 100 extra ponies crammed under the RUF.

One of the first and most amazing things you notice about RUF's mechanical conversion is the complete lack of supercharger whine. At full chat, the RUF-tuned exhaust transforms the stocker’s John Phillip Souza cadence into a Battle of the Bands throw-down. And yet, aside from an occasional "whoosh,” you’d never know a bolt-on supercharger lurks atop the legendary boxer flat six. That is, until the clutch introduces the Kompressor to Mother Earth.One of the real joys of RUF's conversion– or any properly installed supercharger– is the way the pressurized pleasure works in perfect harmony with the vehicle's existing torque curve and gear ratios. A stock 911 is plenty quick. A 911 with a RUF Kompressor is plenty quick times two. Once the RUF car's engine enters Variocamland, available thrust errs on the towering side of immense– to the point where it’s a straight fight between firing synapses and forward momentum. This bad boy keeps all but the turbo twelve-pot AMG drivers out of sight, out of mind.

Pavement snuffling spoiler aside, OEM is the name of the game around town. The 911's famous light effort clutch, accurate shifter and precise steering mean the RUF is still the gold standard in street legal sports cars. The 19" RUF-specific hoops and lowered suspension (invisible unless a stock 911 is available for comparison) offers more grip and less body roll with an insignificant increase in impact harshness. That's all good, ‘cause the RUF Kompressor was born to hustle the chicanes.

The RUF Kompressor takes the 911's game to the next level. Whereas a stock two-wheel drive 911 requires a practiced hand to prevent nose bobbling from becoming speed-scrubbing understeer, the RUF-mobile feels a lot more Cayman-esque: balanced, planted and willing to pivot on its axis. And that means you can approach corners faster, stay on the power longer and hit the go-go juice sooner. No question: this is the Porker to take (and win) at a Porsche club-sponsored driving event.

On the street, the RUF 911 Kompressor cuts corners like a bad builder. The modified Carrera handled everything I dished out with ease– regardless of pavement quality, speed or turn radius– its stellar torque curve constantly taunting me to get on it and get on with it. Mid-corner launches with a Kompressor underfoot transform a quick exit into a joy ride on a catapult, without even tickling the PSM.

RUF’s Kompressor package adds more wholesome 911-goodness to a standard Carrera: speed, more speed and, um, a bit more speed. At the same time, the install doesn’t snag the everyday supercar’s cape, leaving all but a fraction of its legendary loping abilities. In fact, the Kompressor gives naturally-aspirated Porsche patrons a reason to sing “stand by your Carrera” instead of the obligatory nutting-up for a 911 Turbo. Factor the flawless installation, punchy powerband, unique style and a two-year warranty, and the only thing left to ponder is why Porsche doesn’t build ‘em like RUF.

Clocking the new Boxster is like checking out the teenage daughter of your old high school crush. Everything that attracted you to the roadster is still there, only fresher, perkier and more… streamlined. From most angles, the Boxster resembles Ye Olde 996 Turbo, chopped and dropped. From the rear though, and especially with the beefier haunches, the Boxster still appears as if someone is bent over and spreading 'em. If you think this is a coincidence, you haven't watched enough German porn.

Anyone dissing the Boxster as a "chick's car" mistakes form for function. From the controls' perfect positioning to the gauges' layout and legibility, to the thick carpets—everything lets you know you are in a gentlemen's lounge. Sure the buttons are tiny, but 80% of them are for the radio. The wheel, stick and pedals might as well have been designed by you, for you. The lone misstep: Porsche's handling nanny button sits below the passenger heat-seat switch. (NB: do not try to reheat your passenger in a tight right-hander.) Returning to the cockpit is like slipping on your favorite pajama bottoms.

Yes, yes; never mind all that. Once you get the 2.7-liter motor screaming, the seats might as well be made of nails, snakes and glass. Special, endless props go to Porsche's acoustic boffins for getting the soundtrack exactly right. Take the rpms above 4,000 and the Battle of Midway is being waged behind your head. Screw that; the bombing of Dresden. I have never heard such monumental, merciless violence.

The Boxster feels great going straight, stopping, turning left, right and just sitting still. To put it bluntly, the Boxster's a blowjob with wheels. Sure, it's a bit of a power-bottom, totally content to submit to whatever punishment you decide to mete out. No matter what the torture, the Boxster is up for it. Into a turn at full speed? Love it! Mad, second gear acceleration attack out of the apex? More please. Your automotive perversion simply doesn't matter; this ride goes both ways.

Since I'm being a complete pig, the red Boxster produces more cargasms per mile than any other whip in existence. It is so stupidly simple to rotate the rear tires past the plant of the fronts that even a hack driver like me can do it, and do it again. While stomping on the laws of physics during a pistonhead-perfect two-lane canyon romp, my passenger shouted above the cacophony of the exhaust, 'How does it do that?' Dunno. I mean, I'm sure there is a logical, engineering-type explanation for the new Boxster's handling improvements– modified suspension geometry, recalibrated springs, shocks and anti-roll bars– but I chalk it up to magic. The Boxster has the ability to twist the world in front of you; all you need do is tug at some leather.

The only problem with Porsche's Boxster is that other cars exist. I never realized the Boxster was gutless until some vapid, bleached-blond skank in a BMW 650ci beat me in a drag. I had her till 70, but then the Porsche ran out of legs. Point is, I never would have guessed. I suppose the S model solves that deficiency, though you could just give up stoplight shenanigans and pocket the 10 large. Furthermore, no matter how awesome your power slide, no matter how heroic your heal and toe, there always seems to be a mid-80s Dodge Caravan going ten miles under the limit as you round the corner. But that's simply not Porsche's fault.

As the years roll by, one racks up a lot of lovers. Many are duds. Some are fantastically fantastic. But there is always that one: the ugly little secret you cherish in your heart, the truth that you can't stand, hidden from your current partner at all costs. Yes, you convince yourself, I am happy. But then, from across a parking lot, out of the corner of your eye, there she is. I will be testing a lot of extreme metal on your behalf, dear reader, but I have a hard time convincing myself that I will ever get over the new Porsche Boxster. Car of the Year? And then some.

[Porsche provided the vehicle reviewed, taxes, insurance and a tank of gas.]

Physically, it's no stunner. Yes, the Cayman's muscular fastback and sculpted haunches are exquisite: a deeply alluring shape that finally eliminates the Boxster's insipid push-me, pull-you design. But the Cayman's bootylicious butt draws new attention to the exceedingly bland Porsche family nose. Embedded fog lights may separate the model from its stablemates, but they do nothing to lift the miasma of mediocrity that has bedeviled the Boxster's face since birth. The Cayman's side air intakes are another distraction, lacking in both shape and scale. The German/Finnish roadster is also more color-sensitive than Martha Stewart; in anything other than black, the Cayman looks like a small and frivolous sports car souffle. Which it bloody well isn't.

It's funny how a roof adds gravitas to an interior. For one thing, the Boxster's Chicklet-sized buttons don't seem quite so tiny. For another, the containment instills a profound (if subconscious) feeling of safety, increasing the overall sense purpose. Although there's nothing particularly wrong with the Boxster's switchgear or its cabin's fit and finish, Porsche's decision not to alter anything in their 'not a Boxster hardtop' is indefensible. Where's the Cayman-specific shift knob, steering wheel or pedals? Porsche buyers' brains are wired for that kind of action.

And for driving fast. If you want to boldly go where police chase cameras yearn to record, the Cayman's an ideal whip. It's the laser-sighted Glock of sports cars: a perfectly balanced weapon offering infinite accuracy and virtually limitless stopping power. The ammunition provided is controversial– the 295hp 3.4-liter six nestling in the Cayman S' belly could just as easily be the Carrera S' 350hp 3.8-liter mill– but there's no doubt that Porsche's two-plus-nothing tin top has enough shove to hunt with the big dogs, and enough poise to leave them panting by the side of the road. Lest we forget, the Boxster S spanked the Enzo through Road and Track's slalom course. The Cayman S is both stiffer AND faster than a Boxster.

Out in the real world, the Cayman S drives with surefooted chuckability. At slow speeds, the car's fingertip steering, flyweight clutch and slow (though progressive) throttle fools you into thinking it's a bit dim-witted. As you pile on the revs, the Cayman's controls suddenly synergize: the steering gains heft, the six-speed snicks home like a spring-loaded knife and the engine switches into lunge mode. To get the best of the whipper-snapper's powerplant, you have to keep the revs above 4000rpm– which is a bit like saying you have to drink a glass of '59 Chateau LaTour to enjoy it. The noise blatting from the cojoined pipes is cargasmic: raw, animal, aggressive.

The first time you chuck the latter day lil' bastard into a corner its superiority to big brother 911 is immediately apparent. The Cayman's mid-engine layout and light weight make it far more precise going into a turn, more stable through the apex and more benign coming out (C4 and Turbo excepted). Thanks to Porsche's decision to put the 911 into the horsepower protection program, the Cayman can't match the Carrera's post-corner blastitude. But the Cayman's inherent balance lets you carry more speed into the corner. Ultimately, all the [bigger-engined] Carrera variants are faster than a Cayman S. Even so, they can't touch the Cayman S– or the Boxster S– for pedal-to-the-metal fun. What's more, with PSM (Porsche Stability Management) in Sport, Frau Nanny allows a whiff of drift. Wikkid.

Hey kid. Ever dance with the redline in the pale moonlight? Cayman drivers will. And it won't be enough. The truth is, the Cayman S lacks the low end grunt, the mad cackle motorvation it needs to complete its performance matrix and achieve the greatness it deserves. If Porsche put a bunch more whoa Nellie underfoot, the Cayman S would wipe the floor with all but the mightiest 911. In fact, the Cayman S is nothing less than a detuned supercar. What's the point of that? Protecting Carrera sales? Not to coin a phrase, that's a croc. This is the German sports car company that constantly harps-on about the importance of evolution. Ironically enough, Porsche will eventually realize you can't keep a good reptile down. The Cayman will force the 911 to adapt or die and, in the process, bite the hand that feeds.

The C4 is the next-up next-gen 911: a wide-hipped iteration of the new Carrera's Coke-bottle-as-suppository design theme. As such, it's also a minimalist vision of the forthcoming be-winged and bi-gilled Turbo. Although the C4 offers Porsche-spotters a few cosmetic tweaks to the basic model's retro-modern mix, it is, at its core, another Armani-clad psycho-killer. Considering the C4's inherent potential for luring its pilot into legal entanglements, the stealth wealth aesthetic is probably a blessing in disguise.

The C4's interior remains unchanged from the last time Porsche changed it. Now that The Sultans of Stuttgart furnish their 911 interiors to match their $70k-and-up price tag, we can stop bitching about the quality of the cabin materials– and start bitching about the ICE and HVAC interface. Although the C4 has all the gizmology you'd expect for one so dear– sat knavery, XM radiology, integrated cellularity– its Chicklet-sized buttons make its functions a hit-and-miss affair. (Even the daintiest digits suddenly seem elephantine.) Given the C4's glove-weather capabilities and the dashboard's limited real estate, a central touch screen would have been the logical solution.

Nothing needs doing in the sound and fury department. Crank the C4's starter and the Porker's 3.6-liter engine tells the world that motorized mayhem is manifest. The C4's flat six's sonic signature is hard to pin down– and even harder to forget. It combines the nuclear-powered bass notes of Mr. Incredible's cartoon car, the mechanical whirlwind of a Florida Everglades fan boat and the resurrected rasp of Porsches gone by. It's about time paddles appeared on either side of the blissfully button-free steering wheel, but at least the C4's clutch action is perfectly judged. The six-speed snicks home with all the tactile satisfaction of a swooshed b-ball. Right. Time to smoke 'em since we got 'em…

The C4's surge into VarioCam Land is so smooth it's easy to mistake the rev limiter's stuttering for aberrant ABS. It all happens so fast. Sure, the weight of the all-wheel-drive gubbins makes the C4 a tad slower than the identically engined C2. As both mean machines sprint to sixty in near-as-dammit five seconds, arguing about the difference is like debating the relative merits of Dom Perginon and Cristal. More to the point, the C4's ability to transfer up to 40% of its horsepower to the front wheels makes it the quicker of the two cars in anything other than a straight line.

When contemplating the C4's ability to violate the laws of time and space, the main thing to keep in mind is, of all things, safety. The C4's stability-controlled four-wheel-drive system and its stupendous stopping power give adrenalin-crazed amateurs the freedom to make mistakes at truly monumental speeds. This is the sports car that maintains its death grip on the tarmac when rear wheelers have twirled off into the scenery; that lets you know when you're about to make a mistake; that tells you when you've just made a mistake; that gives you a chance to rectify your mistake; that shrugs its computerized shoulders and sorts it all out for you, so you can try again.

If you really want to get picky, yes, the C4 has a bit more understeer at the limit than the C2. On the other hand, the C4's slightly heavier helm makes it easier to position than the rear-wheeler. Again, these are differences without a distinction. Both Carreras are finely-honed surgical instruments fully capable of dissecting your favorite road and leaving it for dead in less time than it takes to deploy its [much-appreciated] cup-holders. That said, only one of these cars significantly increases your chances of avoiding the same fate as the roadway, should over-exuberance and inexperience conspire to kill you dead.

The biggest problem presented by C4 ownership is… greed. Once you've driven the C4 boldly where you've only tip-toed before, you will feel a deep, irresistible urge for more horsepower. And then it's straight to… envy. The first time you see the Carrera 4S or, God forbid, the new Turbo, you will experience an ugly mix of desire and hatred. As anyone who owns a Carrera will know, buying the new C4 makes you a glutton for punishment.