First Drive: 2015 Porsche Cayman GTS and Boxster GTS

2015 Porsche Boxster GTS, Cayman GTS. Click image to enlarge

But what makes these new GTS models so enjoyable and pleasing to push hard might be less about what you feel, and more about what you don’t. Any car, especially driven hard, is always in a state of struggle. Its weight tries to keep it from accelerating. Its momentum wants it to go straight, not to turn a corner. Mass tries to keep the car moving when drivers want it to stop. That’s all a given. Every car is subject to these sorts of struggles. It’s the rules.

But in Cayman and Boxster, and perhaps especially in the GTS models, you feel less like you’re in a struggle and more like you’re being backed up and supported by a machine that’s working with, not against, Newton’s laws. Responses to braking, throttle and steering inputs are immediate, precise and executed with curious enthusiasm. There’s no hesitation or delay, there’s minimal sense of ever fighting the car or arguing with it to go where it’s pointed, and even the sound of the flat-six engine flooding into the cabin sounds gloriously potent, not strained.

In any case, all skill levels are covered here. In the GTS models, more novice drivers can expect to feel fully backed-up for spirited or closed-course driving, able to access plenty of the machine’s capability from the get go. Suspension, stability control, transmission and throttle operation can be toggled between various modes to match the course, intention or skill level at play – meaning experienced drivers will feel right at home, too. A good thing – as ultimately, shoppers planning to participate in motorsports activities will experience the highest return on their investment in the performance services of the new GTS machines.

For a Boxster GTS or Cayman GTS, fully loaded with the sort of add-on go-fast tech optional in non-GTS models, that investment starts in the mid-eighties.