So a few months after the debut of the 718 Boxster, Porsche now drops the official material on that car’s hardtop sister, the new Porsche 718 Cayman. The sports coupe gets the same four-cylinder turbo engine as its topless sis, and but slightly different dynamic characteristics. 

That of course means the 2017 Porsche 718 Cayman comes in two normal and S variants, with the former boasting a 2.0 liter 300hp flat-turbo-four (250hp in the Chinese market), whereas the latter gets a 2.5 liter unit with 350hp. The S version also gets turbocharger with variable turbine geometry (VTG) which it borrows from the 911 Turbo.

That means Porsche 718 Cayman S also packs 420 Nm of torque, and that results in a sprint from zero to 100 km/h in 4.7 seconds (PDK + SportChrono package) and a top speed of 285 km/h. The new model also features high-end technologies such as Porsche Torque Vectoring (PTV) and PASM with 10mm lower ride height, but compared with the Boxster, it’s the sold roof that makes the Cayman a bit more rigid and therefore a tiny bit better around corners. That’s pretty much all the difference.

To be honest we would happily trade better cornering for open-top fun of the Boxster. What’s more, the Boxster seems to us a bit better looking as well. It is as if Porsche has a tendency to make every other Cayman an ugly car. So while the previous model was a looker, this one just seems a bit odd. The insistence on drawing inspiration from the original 718 hasn’t really worked in favor of the modern 718 models.