Apparently the Cayman has inherited the mantle of “poor man’s Porsche” from its older brother, the Boxster. If that’s meant to be a slur, it’s a feeble one. It’s like pitying a man who’s bagged a date with Solange Knowles instead of Beyoncé. We could understand if the Cayman had been assembled in an ex-Soviet munitions factory by rehabilitated convicts and was made from melted-down washing machines. But it’s as German as a blue-eyed Alsatian in lederhosen, Porsche to its sexy core, and its relative affordability shouldn’t be equated with inferiority.
Unfortunately, for the two measly days I had the Cayman it rained. Not just a drizzle but the kind of twice-a-year torrential downpour that causes roads to look like muddy fishponds. This meant my test-drive was hampered by paranoid slow-coach drivers clogging up the fast-lane and my own cautious approach due to driving a Porsche for the first time ever.
Still, I was won over by this car in the time it took to figure out how to use the satnav (about 30 seconds). It’s extremely comfortable – I felt like a plump baby in a marshmallow beanbag – with plenty of room and good visibility, even if you’re 6ft or taller. This is helped by the 60mm increase in wheelbase, creating more space than the previous model.
The entire interior has been designed to make things intuitively accessible for the driver. The steering wheel and the gear level are a short distance from each other, and all of the buttons and functions are easily found when your eyes are fixed on the road. I’m not a fan of tiny electronic handbrakes squeezed next to the steering wheel, but in pancake-flat Dubai where you hardly use it, this was a trifling annoyance.
Like the Boxster, it has electric-power-assisted steering and an engine fitted in the middle of the car (unlike the 911, which is housed in the back), that offers much better weight distribution. Even with slippery roads, I felt confident that I was sufficiently rooted to the surface, which made me wonder how much more fun I could have had, had I driven it on a regular bone-dry road. (Hint to Porsche: How about another bite at the cherry?).
It might share as much DNA with the Boxster as a human shares with a chimpanzee but it will get mistaken now and again for a 911, too. It’s got the lean curves and that crouching, predatory feline demeanour.
The manufacturer may have called it a completely new model but it oozes reassuring familiarity, even in the way it sounds when revved. And luggage space? OK, so buying a Cayman for its ability to shift any cargo bigger than a carrier bag is like buying a thoroughbred racehorse to work a plough, but this is an ideal car for, say, a weekend break in Liwa where you can test it out on the pin-straight roads (preferably when it hasn’t been raining).
Its 5.3-cubic-foot front trunk is bigger than the 911’s 4.8-cubic-foot frunk and the Cayman goes one better with 9.7 cubes of space next to the engine. A grand total of 15 cubic feet.
Buyers can choose from a huge variety of colours and materials, for both the exterior and interior, so if you want to stand out (and let’s face it, you can’t drive five minutes in the UAE without seeing another Porsche these days), you can get creative. But not too creative. The Kermit green colour is a step too far and we’re not too fussed about what Porsche refers to as Smurf Blue either.
