2023 Porsche 718 Cayman GTS 4.0 Owner Review: Finally My Forever Car

This review is a little different than the ones I normally write. Nobody handed me the keys for a week and asked for 500 words by Friday. This is 3.5 years of actual ownership on a car I spec’d from scratch, paid for myself, and driven almost exclusively the way it was built to be driven.

I should be upfront: objectivity was never the goal with these ramblings. Owning a Porsche built to my exact spec was a bucket list item, and this is my love letter to the result. This is 3.5 years of absolute joy every time I get behind the wheel. 

The Wait: Ships, Fires, and Empty Harbors

After waiting three months for an allocation, I was finally given one by Porsche North Houston in December 2021. I put my deposit down in January 2022, and the automotive world got even crazier than it already was, with Covid causing all kinds of chaos in the auto industry. In February, the Felicity Ace — carrying a hold full of Porsches — sank to the bottom of the Atlantic. In the months that followed, the war in Ukraine shut down the wire harness supply chain that runs through the country, and factory shutdowns cascaded from there. A standard build became a waiting game with no end date.

My 2022 model was pushed, delayed, and finally resurrected as a 2023. There were even options that were pulled on my build (Goodbye power steering column and PDLS+ LED headlights) one week before production, which Porsche gave us customers zero control over. You got what you got, and just be happy we’re selling you a car is what Porsche’s attitude felt like.

When it finally landed at the dealer in October 2022, the frustration evaporated the moment I saw it on the lot, not 20 minutes after it’d been dropped off by truck from the Port of Houston. Even under the white transportation tape, the Shark Blue paint was glowing. I was given the privilege of peeling the tape off myself — a slow, tactile ritual that felt like the ultimate payoff for ten months of waiting. Seeing Zuffenhausen on the Monroney sticker confirmed it: my car was finally here.

The Engine: In the Key of Flat-Six

The 4.0-liter flat-six in the GTS isn’t the GT3’s motorsport-derived engine that screams to a 9,000 rpm redline. This is a wet-sump unit, bored and stroked, derived from the 911 Carrera’s 3.0-liter block, built specifically for the mid-engine platform and shared with the GT4. While the GTS 4.0 redline is only 8,000 rpm, there’s just something romantic about winding out the second half of the tach. 

What it has is throttle response that no turbocharged engine can replicate. What you ask for arrives immediately and in exact proportion. The intake, the valvetrain, the exhaust — they’re a physical presence through the firewall right behind your shoulder blades. Past 4,000 rpm, the engine finds its voice and screams all the way to redline, raising goosebumps on your arm every single time. No turbocharged car can touch it.

The Cayman GTS 4.0 has 394 horsepower and 309 lb-ft of torque, which is slightly lower than the GT4’s, but the difference is almost imperceptible on the road. Modest on paper next to turbocharged rivals. On an actual road, the power is entirely sufficient — because the Cayman is light and the mid-engine layout means the power is always working with you. Another 25 – 30 horsepower would be great, but absolutely not necessary. 

The Gearbox: Zero Regrets

The internet (looking at you, Porsche Discord and Rennlist) will tell you manual or nothing. I went with the PDK, and I have zero regrets. This was not a compromise, but rather a deliberate choice to get what I felt was the best gearing for the street. The manual has a LONG second gear, which just isn’t much fun around town. It’s annoying enough that DeMan sells a gearing conversion for those who are opting for the 4.5L conversion.

With Sport Chrono set in the default mode, the Cayman GTS 4.0 handles the Houston commute well, but it’s just not very fun. You *can* commute in it, but that’s not what this car is meant for, and it just actually gets quite frustrating not being able to stretch its legs.

 Get out on a Texas backroad, however, and things are even more at home with performance. Move the dial to Sport Plus, and everything sharpens. The PDK keeps the car right in the perfect part of the power band. Pull a paddle, and the gearbox responds instantly, dropping you exactly where you need to be in the powerband. The engine and transmission simply do what you ask, the instant you ask it.

The real reason I chose it: the PDK lets me focus on everything else — the chassis, the steering, what the rear axle is doing on exit. The Cayman communicates so much through the seat and the wheel that I’d rather process all of that than manage a clutch pedal at the same time. The manual is a legitimate choice. It’s just not the one I was after.

Handling: A Direct Dialogue

There’s a specific pivot in a mid-engine car you won’t find anywhere else. With the mass centered between the axles, the rear comes alive underneath you, rotating around a point somewhere near your hip. You feel it in the first corner and never stop feeling it.

Turn in and the front bites immediately, no hesitation. The rear doesn’t just follow — it pivots around you.

The Cayman is a better car than I am a driver, but it matches my capabilities. As I push harder, it pushes harder. My skills as a driver and my comfort with the car have both grown over three and a half years, and the GTS has grown with me. I haven’t found the ceiling yet — and I’m not sure I will on a public road.

FM 3090 west of Houston — tight and technical, with long sweepers you can carry real speed through if you’re paying attention. After a burger at Yankee’s Tavern on a Sunday morning, that road is where the Cayman GTS 4.0 makes its case most clearly. The car loads up mid-corner and asks for more. It’s telling you to trust it, push it, let it do what it was built to do. Three and a half years in, I’ve come to understand that it will let me know when I’m approaching trouble. Until then, it just wants more.

The PASM suspension features adjustable dampers that make it comfortable in standard mode across all road conditions. Switch to sport chassis mode, and it gets noticeably stiffer — stiff enough to telegraph exactly how much grip is left in the Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires, but tuned to (mostly) absorb the worst of what Houston’s roads can throw at it.

The Wall: A Eulogy for the Analog

The final 982-generation 718 rolled off the line in Osnabrück in October 2025. With it, this specific kind of car officially ceased to exist. 

The 718 didn’t age out — it hit a wall of regulations that don’t care about steering feel. The 982’s electrical architecture speaks an analog language. New UN R155 cybersecurity regulations now require cars to be digital fortresses with encrypted ECUs and over-the-air compliance monitoring. It also requires the entire framework to be compliant from the very first pen-to-paper during development. To bring the 718 into compliance, Porsche would have had to replace every controller in the car, and then some. They concluded it was cheaper to move to the next-generation 983 platform and build an EV from scratch than to refactor the existing 982 platform.

Then there’s the engine. Euro 7 and other stricter global emissions standards don’t just set limits — they require real-world emissions monitoring, in which the car constantly measures its own output under actual driving conditions. A naturally aspirated engine built to breathe freely can’t pass those tests without the kind of after-treatment hardware that changes everything about how it responds. Porsche hasn’t announced a compliant version of the 4.0 because there is no viable path to one that meets those regulations without significantly neutering it with emissions devices.

We are entering an era of mandatory nannies — Intelligent Speed Assistance that pushes back on the throttle and event data recorders that log every input. Systems that beep at you because the gap between you and the car in front is only 10 car lengths.  Systems that try to take steering control away because they don’t think you’re smart enough to handle the lane-change maneuver. The Cayman GTS 4.0 predates all of it. It’s the last time Porsche was allowed to build a car that assumes the pilot knows what they’re doing without the aid of electronic widgets. 

The Real Cost of Ownership

Three and a half years in, the ownership costs of the Cayman GTS 4.0 have been refreshingly straightforward. The 12-month service was covered under Porsche’s new car package. At the point of sale, I purchased a prepaid service plan for $1,250 that covered the 24-month service term — one of the better decisions I made at the time. The 36-month service ran $1,271 at an authorized Porsche dealer. In May 2025, I replaced the factory Pirellis with Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires at $1,950.

Total cost of ownership minus fuel and insurance over three and a half years: roughly $4,471. Zero warranty work of any kind. Surprisingly, the car is barely more expensive to insure than our Jeep Wrangler, and the Wrangler is actually very cheap. 

For a car at this price point, that’s a number worth knowing. It won’t cost you Toyota money, but it’s nowhere near exotic-car territory either. 

The Forever Car

Looking back at everything it took to get this car, would I do it again? Without hesitation.

The mid-engine Porsche dream started with the Boxster in 1997. Nearly thirty years later, the line ends here. You can no longer spec a 718 with an atmospheric flat-six, choose every option with intent, and wait for the car you designed to become real. For me, that wait was ten months of excruciating anticipation, with no visibility into when — or if — it would come. The moment those keys hit my hand, every frustration and every doubt disappeared.

I didn’t buy it as an appreciating asset. I bought it because nothing else like it will ever be built by Porsche, and I intend to drive the wheels off of it. Every time I catch that glimpse of Shark Blue in the garage, I get the same involuntary grin I had the day I peeled off the transport tape. Three and a half years in, that hasn’t changed. This one isn’t going anywhere.

Also, read about why the car isn’t even the best part about Porsche ownership here – The Best Thing About Owning a Porsche Has Nothing to Do With the Car

Life is too short to drive boring cars. Get out and drive.