The Truth About Cayman?
 

Listen now:

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=1860

A bit of sale talk haze there, but obviously some kernals of truth. Good stuff.

As a boxster owner, I rather enjoyed his rebutal when the interviewer called boxsters a 'chick car'. :)

I think most of the 'chick car' comments come from those who have never driven one.

The subject of cars is one of those where every man instantly believes himself to be an expert. I had a conversation with a coworker that went something like this:

HIM: Do you know what the fakest (this is his word choice, I swear) Porsche is? The Boxster.

ME: Um. How do you figure?

HIM: It's just fake. It's slow, like not even a real Porsche.

ME: What? The Boxster is a great car. It's not slow -- well, the first models were considered a little underpowered, but the newest 3.2 S models will give a two-year-old 911 a run for its money. Actually, the Boxster is considered the benchmark in two-seater convertibles by most automotive journalists, even by guys like Clarkson who don't even like Porsche.

HIM: Oh. Really?

Why do people make such bold assertions when they obviously have no idea what they are talking about? I remember when I was 18 years old, the Viper had just debuted, and a friend of mine made the auspicious claim that the Viper was the "fastest car in the world". I ran inside to get the newest issue of ROAD & TRACK as fast as I could.

In the past week, I have seen 3 Caymans on the road. It is a beautiful car. Maybe in 10 years when they are touchable for me, I'll get one. That is after the Ariel Atom, David

Saw some dude in one in the Palisades. I had to double take. I was going to circling around and descend upon him to see its performance up close and personal, but decided against it...Pretty cool.

I am determined to get my hands on an Atom. I'll keep an eye out for that Atom in the SoCal area. Jay Leno has the only one in SoCal that I know of....

David

Why can't they make them smaller? They seem big to me, standing next to one anyway. Not as big as a Carrera GT, and I never drove one, so maybe they feel smaller.

I always liked little cars, Bugs, air-cooled 911's, Speedsters, 914's. XKE's with the big hood, while a great car, you can keep if you ask me. Minis(BMC version, not BMW) Lotuses(Loti?), Datsun 510's, my list of cars to covet contains primarily compacts.

I was once told that Volkswagen builds Porsches. "They build them side by side in the same factory. Ive been there"

I just agreed with him and went on my way.

I'll argue the opposite. After seeing the Cayman for the first time, I was very underwhelmed. I'd take a year or two old Boxster S, get a hardtop, and pocket the savings.

I like the Cayman and the new 911 as well.
The problem I have with these cars is they don't look like Porsches--they just look like your typical modern sports car. I like the old 911s which had more Porsche definition. Porsche has lost a bit of its identity trying to make their cars look modern. I suppose it's hard not to do that.

One suggestion: go back to the old fender-to-fender tailight with large embedded "Porsche" letters. No mistake about that.

P--O--R--S--C--H--E

Car and Driver likes the Cayman S better than the new M Coupe in their lastest issue.

I have to chuckle about the Z4 running out of gas twice with the tank reading 1/4 full. They still haven't fixed the fuel sender! I had a '98 Z3 with this problem--a very common one for Z3s.

The Z4 coupe appears to have a very small tank, even without a faulty sending unit issue. What is it, 13.5 gallons?

Nah! There's another Atom that has lately been doing DE laps at Willow Springs.

Incidentally, it was the same Atom I saw broken down on the 14 Freeway toward Palmdale - out in the middle of nowhere.