The 2016 Porsche Cayman GT4

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How We’d Spec It: The 2016 Porsche Cayman GT4 Track Car of Our Apexing Fantasies Porsche’s newest track animal, the Cayman GT4, is upon us, and having driven one and loved it, we immediately set our Realistic-O-Meters to “Laughably Impossible” and jumped on the company’s online configurator to build the Cayman GT4 we’d buy. Full disclosure: The Cayman GT4 you’re about to witness is fully in “seventh car” territory, meaning we’re tossing everyday drivability out the window in favor of a track-devouring beast that we wouldn’t even drive to the track. How’d it get there? We’d trailer it behind our Cayenne Turbo, of course. (It can tow 7716 pounds, after all.) MODEL: Porsche Cayman GT4 (base price: $85,595) Right out of the box, the Cayman GT4 is built for one thing and one thing only: absolute destruction of your racetrack of choice. Whereas other Caymans make do with a 3.4-liter flat-six making up to 340 horsepower, the GT4 utilizes the 3.8-liter six from the 911 Carrera S. Although down 15 ponies on the same engine in the Carrera S, the GT4 engine nonetheless makes a strong—and likely underrated—385 horsepower. Other GT4 exclusives include an adjustable aerodynamics kit with a deep front splitter and a towering, fixed rear wing; 20-inch aluminum wheels; and a special leather and faux-suede interior. Critically, the GT4 comes solely with a six-speed manual transmission. The more expensive 911 GT3, previously the entry point to Porsche’s GT line of track-focused beasts, comes only with Porsche’s PDK dual-clutch automatic. Standard equipment includes six-piston front brake calipers, four-piston rear; cruise control; power windows; bixenon headlights; a sport exhaust system; and a special suspension setup with a host of 911 GT3 components. That’s not a lot of creature-comfort features for $85,595, but it’s plenty of go-fast gear in a well-engineered package. Everyone knows that red seatbelts make cars faster, so we dropped $350 on Guards Red straps (they just so happen to match the GT4’s red brake calipers, too). A heady $4730 swaps the standard sport seats for racy carbon-fiber fixed-back buckets to better keep our booties planted during high-g cornering, and the $690 swiveling Porsche Dynamic Light system will help us see around darkened corners. The Sport Chrono package comes with an analog lap timer on the dashboard, as well as a digital timer in the gauge cluster and an attendant smartphone app that allows for the remote triggering of lap-time splits (that part is especially useful, given that deleting the radio removes the ability to analyze data on the dashboard display). Our track-day special complete, the only thing left to do was christen it with an appropriate color scheme. We selected Carrara White, a classic, off-white-ish hue that looks great with the GT4’s standard, gray-finished wheels. (You can get silver or black-painted rims, too.) Just for fun—and because it’s free—we opted for black-painted rear wing supports. If you’re wondering what that does for the car’s speed, well, see our logic regarding the red seatbelts.