Speed:Sport:Life

Photos by the author

The Porsche Cayman has been lauded since its introduction for its connected handling, communicative steering and sonorous, flat-six engine. There’s a certain intangible “rightness” I feel when I drive one, like the engineers over in Weissach knew exactly what matters to me as a driver and built a car to meet those needs. It’s a feeling few other cars have ever provided, including even the Cayman’s sister, the Boxster. Short of the stripped-out Spyder variant, the fabric-topped version of Porsche’s mid-engined twins has never quite grabbed me where it matters. That feeling of rightness proved so strong that a few years ago, I threw caution and financial savvy to the wind and picked up an Atlas Gray three-year-old CPO Cayman S of my very own.

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As soon as the glare of the oncoming BMW’s headlights fades, I know I am in trouble. As my eyes refocus, they fall not upon the road ahead as I expected, but instead upon a rather unfortunate collection of roadside obstacles of the rigid and wooden variety. The uncooperative asphalt has wandered off to the left somewhere, snaking over the crest of a small hill, its freshly painted white line taunting me as it disappears behind the Porsche’s hood. You know how racers and halfway decent high-performance driving instructors always ramble on about vision? As it turns out, vision is an important thing when you’re careening around a back road at 1 o’clock in the morning.

In somebody else‘s seventy-thousand-dollar Porsche.

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