OK my prick car has some serious low/medium speed steady-state understeer. It def'ly needs front camber mods (GT3 control arms)

And I test drove a Cayman S with PSS9s'. I fell in love.

I may end up selling the 911 and getting a Cayman S...

Welp...that was quick!

https://www.miataturbo.net/cars-sale...briolet-89865/

I'll surely miss the big power, the droptop, and that exhaust bellow above 5000 RPM.

Well that didn't last long! Should have bought a Turbo ;)

I won a 1st place mug with it at a Miata club autox the other weekend... it was not a good autox car (with no setup and tight miata course) :p

Isn't the cayman s the best handling porsche? Like even including their super cars?

They just specifically detune the engine and put less sticky tires on it from the factory. iirc

Depends whom you ask.

According to this article the 911 GT3 is the best handling car:
America's Best Handling Car - Motor Trend
That's a very interesting article, BTW.

However, in that same test, the Cayman S had the best ride and handling compromise.

The 911, and the Cayman, to a lesser extent, have more understeer from the factory than we miata types are used to. More front camber addresses it.

To me, the Cayman's smaller size, quicker steering, and lower polar moment, make it a better backroads car. The 911 is faster on race tracks where you can plan your whole corner, due to its ability to brake deeper, power out earlier and harder, and its big power.
The whole "snap oversteer" problem of 911's has long been engineered out... since the 996.

^Neat article to read. Completely disagree with leaving the OEM tires on each car. Especially on the corvette, the oem tires are super shitty. I've ridden in a stock (other than brake pads, fluids) 2007 Z06 with 295 Hoosiers, and it exhibited little of the symptoms described in the article.

I laughed really hard at the Mazdaspeed 3 beating the S2000 on the track. Hilarious.

An extra 100+ ft-lbs of torque really does make a difference...

who needs tq when you have 10k limiter

For a magazine test there really isn't any other way to do it.

--Ian

^ Except with GRM.

Here's another interesting read:

The Mid- vs. Rear-Engine Debate: Porsche Cayman R vs. 911 GT3 - Feature - Car and Driver

GRM doesn't test cars with non-OEM tires. Their tests with non-OEM tires are *tire* tests, not car tests, and they use the same car for them.

If you were to try to run a magazine test with non-OEM tires, how would you do it? What tires would you use, and who would pick them? You can't use the same tires for all the cars, because many tires aren't available in sizes that fit every car, and even if they were the best tire is going to be different between different cars. Even if you picked a different tire for each car, you're still going to get people complaining that they picked the wrong one for car X and that's why it lost to car Y. Oh, and you'd also have to figure out who's going to pay for all of these tires -- certainly not the OEMs that supply the vehicles free. :)

By testing on the OEM tires, you're testing the car as-delivered from the manufacturer, in the state that it will likely be in for at least the first 10-20K miles that it's owned.

--Ian

Everyone crying about unfair comparison in the comments on that one, while yah they are priced differently they are at the top of each 'model'.

That said... no backseat... Cayman fail :p

For those of us not especially fond of hardtops as daily-drivers, do the comments regarding the Cayman v. 911 apply equally as to Boxster v. 911 Cabrio?

Pretty close.
The Boxster does weigh a wee bit more than the equivalent Cayman and has less chassis rigidity. But the suspension tuning is very very similar. Ditto the 911 Cabrio vs. coupe.
The thing about 911 Cabrios is that manual trannies are a bit hard to find. Mine is a manual.